Enhanced levels of stimulated Brillouin reflectivity from non-Maxwellian plasmas

Abstract.A model that counts for temperature gradients in the target plasma, which leads to higher ion acoustic noise and enhanced levels of stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) gain and SBS reflectivity, has been adopted. Enhanced Brillouin gain leading to higher SBS reflectivity levels has been computed for non-homogeneous, non-Maxwellian plasmas. SBS reflectivity levels obtained are higher than those predicted by linear convective gain theory by several orders of magnitude and coincide with the high values of experimental data known in literature, which could not be interpreted by the linear convective gain theory.