Jc. Fernandez et al., INCREASED SATURATED LEVELS OF STIMULATED BRILLOUIN-SCATTERING OF A LASER BY SEEDING A PLASMA WITH AN EXTERNAL LIGHT-SOURCE, Physical review letters, 81(11), 1998, pp. 2252-2255
The reflectivity of laser light due to stimulated Brillouin scattering
(SBS) from long-scale plasmas normally saturates when the laser inten
sity is increased sufficiently. Nevertheless a significant increase in
the SBS reflectivity back into the beam cone results from a subtle ch
ange in the target geometry, done for the purpose of seeding SBS. The
key element is apparently the injection into the plasma of a modest ex
ternal electromagnetic seed at a wavelength near that of the scattered
light.