Abstract

An important part of laser fusion concerns Itself with the laser matter interaction in the target corona- in this region the light is absorbed, scattered, and refracted by various mechanisms such as inverse bremsstrahlung, resonance absorption, stimulated Britain scattering (SBS), stimulated Raman scattering (SRS), the 2ω_p decay instability, and selffocusing. It has repeatedly been shown that at λ ≲ 0.5 -μm wavelength, the laser light absorption is more effective and leads to more benign plasma conditions in the corona. In addition, the coupling of the laser light at higher plasma densities leads to higher hydrodynamic efficiencies in spherical targets under UV irradiation, hence the strong interest in short-wavelength laser fusion in recent years.

© 1983 Optical Society of America