Modeling of stimulated Brillouin scattering in expanding plasmas

Numerical simulations of mm-size expanding plasmas have been performed in comparison with recent experiments at the LULI facility. The features of Stimulated Brillouin Scattering (SBS) are studied for an intense mono-speckle laser beam in continuation of previous work on optically smoothed laser beams. Very good agreement between the theoretical-numerical modeling and the experimental results is found, in particular concerning the SBS activity in the plasma and the backscatter level. The results underline the importance of nonlocal transport effects affecting the onset of self-focusing for temperatures below 1keV. The simulations with the monospeckle beam allow to identify the resonant filament instability [1] and the subsequent loss of coherence of the laser beam as the reason of the observed low-level backscatter levels measured in the experiments. To achieve reliable numerical modeling, a good characterisation of the plasma profiles and the timing with respect to the laser pulse shape, prior to simulations, proves to be extremely important.