Influence of binary Coulomb collisions on nonlinear stimulated Raman backscatter in the kinetic regime

The influence of binary Coulomb collisions on trapped particle nonlinearities related to stimulated Raman scatter (SRS) in a single laser speckle is examined using one-dimensional particle-in-cell simulations. Binary Coulomb collisions are incorporated using a numerical particle-pairing algorithm that reproduces a collision integral of the Landau form. The onset of nonlinearly enhanced levels of SRS reflectivity is shown to coincide with electron trapping in the daughter plasma wave and is sensitive to the collisional scattering rate. Relaxation of trapping-induced perturbations to the electron velocity distribution via collisional velocity space diffusion is predicted to have the largest effect on the onset of SRS when the amplitude of the daughter plasma wave is smallest, and trapping-induced perturbations to the electron velocity distribution function are also small. In the absence of higher dimensional detrapping mechanisms (e.g., electron side-loss), it is shown that the onset threshold for enhanced SRS reflectivity is determined predominantly by the parallel diffusion of trapped electrons scattering from bulk thermal electrons, and that for the conditions studied here, the contribution to detrapping from perpendicular diffusion is non-negligible. Additionally, inverse bremsstrahlung heating of the bulk electrons is shown to shift the daughter plasma wave spectrum upward along the Stoke's resonance to larger wave frequency and smaller wave number, changing the linear parametric coupling conditions to SRS backscatter as a function of time. The reduction in SRS reflectivity from binary Coulomb collisions is greatest for laser intensities near the collisionless onset threshold, ulimately leading to an increase in the onset threshold laser intensity for enhanced SRS reflectivity in the kinetic regime. (C) 2011 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3570659]