No Arabic abstract
We study theoretically the exchange of angular momentum between electromagnetic and electrostatic waves in a plasma, due to the stimulated Raman and Brillouin backscattering processes. Angular momentum states for plasmon and phonon fields are introduced for the first time. We demonstrate that these states can be excited by nonlinear wave mixing, associated with the scattering processes. This could be relevant for plasma diagnostics, both in laboratory and in space. Nonlinearly coupled paraxial equations and instability growth rates are derived.
We study theoretically the exchange of angular momentum between a photon beam and a plasma vortex, and demonstrate the possible excitation of photon angular momentum states in a plasma. This can be relevant to laboratory and space plasma diagnostics; radio astronomy self-calibration; and generating photon angular momentum beams. A static plasma perturbation with helical structure, and a rotating plasma vortex are studied in detail and a comparison between these two cases, and their relevance to the physical nature of photon OAM, is established.
A novel regime of self-compression is proposed for plasma-based backward Raman amplification(BRA) upon flying focus. By using a pumping focus moving with a speed equal to the group velocity of stimulated Raman backscattering(SRBS), only a short part of SRBS which does always synchronize with the flying focus can be amplified. Due to the asymmetrical amplification, the pulse can be directly compressed in the linear stage of BRA. Therefore, instead of a short pulse, the Raman spontaneous or a long pulse can seed the BRA amplifiers. The regime is supported by the 2D particle-in-cell(PIC) simulation without a seed, presenting that the pump pulse is compressed from 26ps to 116fs, with an output amplitude comparable with the case of a well-synchronized short seed. This method provides a significant way to simplify the Raman amplifiers and overcome the issue of synchronization jitter between the pump and the seed.
Stimulated Brillouin backscattering of light is shown to be drastically enhanced in electron-positron plasmas, in contrast to the suppression of stimulated Raman scattering. A generalized theory of three-wave coupling between electromagnetic and plasma waves in two-species plasmas with arbitrary mass ratios, confirmed with a comprehensive set of particle-in-cell simulations, reveals violations of commonly-held assumptions about the behavior of electron-positron plasmas. Specifically, in the electron-positron limit three-wave parametric interaction between light and the plasma acoustic wave can occur, and the acoustic wave phase velocity differs from its usually assumed value.
Rotational Fresnel drag - or orbital Faraday rotation - in a rotating magnetised plasma is uncovered and studied analytically for Trivelpiece-Gould and Whistler-Helicon waves carrying orbital angular momentum (OAM). Plasma rotation is shown to introduce a non-zero phase shift between OAM-carrying eigenmodes with opposite helicities, similarly to the phase-shift between spin angular momentum eigenmodes associated with the classical Faraday effect in a magnetised plasma at rest. By examining the dispersion relation for these two low-frequency modes in a Brillouin rotating plasma, this Faraday-Fresnel rotation effect is traced back to the combined effects of Doppler shift, centrifugal forces and Coriolis forces. In addition, rotation is further shown to lead to rotation- and azimuthal mode-dependent longitudinal group velocity, therefore predicting the Faraday-Fresnel splitting of the enveloppe of a wave packet containing a superposition of OAM-carrying eigenmodes with opposite helicities.
An investigation of the possible inflation of stimulated Brillouin backscattering (SBS) due to ion kinetic effects is presented using electromagnetic particle simulations and integrations of three-wave coupled-mode equations with linear and nonlinear models of the nonlinear ion physics. Electrostatic simulations of linear ion Landau damping in an ion acoustic wave, nonlinear reduction of damping due to ion trapping, and nonlinear frequency shifts due to ion trapping establish a baseline for modeling the electromagnetic SBS simulations. Systematic scans of the laser intensity have been undertaken with both one-dimensional particle simulations and coupled-mode-equations integrations, and two values of the electron-to-ion temperature ratio (to vary the linear ion Landau damping) are considered. Three of the four intensity scans have evidence of SBS inflation as determined by observing more reflectivity in the particle simulations than in the corresponding three-wave mode-coupling integrations with a linear ion-wave model, and the particle simulations show evidence of ion trapping.