Abstract
The nonlinear decay of the electrostatic daughter wave is shown to provide an efficient saturation mechanism for stimulated Brillouin and Raman scattering. The saturated steady-state reflectivity due to SBS depends on the plasma density. In the range nor approximately=0.25 ncr. In the stimulated Raman scattering the saturation effect due to the Langmuir decay is even stronger. SRS saturates to the value of the order of (ve/c)4 depending on the plasma temperature only. The effect of the ES daughter wave decay on the parametric decay instability is studied briefly. According to a rough analysis it seems likely that the secondary decay processes have only a small influence on the anomalous absorption near the critical density.