Predictive Three Dimensional Modeling of Stimulated Brillouin Scattering in Ignition-Scale Experiments

摘要

The first three-dimensional (3D) simulations of a high power 0.35 micro laser beam propagating through a high temperature hohlraum plasma are reported. We show that 3D linear kinetic modeling of Stimulated Brillouin scattering reproduces quantitatively the experimental measurements, provided it is coupled to detailed hydrodynamics simulation and a realistic description of the laser beam from its millimeter-size envelop down to the micron scale speckles. These simulations accurately predict the strong reduction of SBS measured when polarization smoothing is used.