Ion-acoustic instability with allowance for inverse bremsstrahlung in a weakly collisional plasma

The growth rate of ion-acoustic instability is found by means of a systemat ic description of electron kinetics with allowance for the inverse-bremsstr ahlung absorption of an electromagnetic field in a weakly collisional plasm a. When the mean free path of the thermal electrons exceeds the characteris tic scale length for the components of the electron oscillatory velocity te nsor, the instability growth rate is a strongly anisotropic function of the wave vector of the sound waves. For the directions of the perturbation wav e vector fur which the growth rate is maximum, its absolute value is so lar ge that the ion-acoustic instability can efficiently develop under conditio ns typical of hot laser-produced plasmas.