Envelope-kinetic analysis of the electron kinetic effects on Raman backscatter and Raman backward laser amplification

Abstract

The electron kinetic effects on Raman backscattering and Raman backward laser amplification were analyzed. The analysis is based on the envelope-kinetic equations of a plasma wave, which are composed of the conventional envelope equation of a fluid plasma and the kinetic term. One major goal of this paper is to close the envelope-kinetic model by analyzing the kinetic term, which was not fully covered in the previous work [M. S. Hur et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 115003 (2005)]. It was found that the closed envelope-kinetic equation in the nontrapping regime takes the same form as the envelope equation of the fluid plasma used in the three-wave model. For the closure in the trapping-dominant regime, the test particle technique is employed to calculate the kinetic term. Results from the full kinetic and test particle simulations agree well with each other, while the latter has a great advantage in computation speed. The frequency shift and resonance breaking by the trapped particles are discussed with the help of a new diagnostic inserted in the full kinetic averaged particle-in-cell code.