Three-wave parametric instabilities in long-scale-length, somewhat planar, laser-produced plasmas

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Abstract
Three-wave parametric instabilities, in which an incident, laser-light wave resonantly decays into two decay waves, have long been recognized to potentially play a large role in the physics of laser-produced plasmas. Many effects have been predicted, but only gradually and with difficulty have experiments developed the ability to observe some of them. One obstacle has been that the behavior of the instabilities often depends upon the scale length and planarity of the plasma. My collaborators and I have worked for several years to overcome this specific obstacle and when necessary now work routinely with plasmas that are thousands of laser wavelengths in the axial and transverse scale lengths of the plasma parameters. This has allowed us to report the first observations of some instabilities and study the scaling behavior of several instabilities as well.