Stimulated Brillouin back-scattering losses in weakly inhomogeneous laser-produced plasmas

Abstract
Studies of the reflection from a plane solid target plasma produced with a 1 TW iodine laser ( lambda =1.3 mu m) at pulse durations of 300 ps are presented. The specularly reflected and the back-scattered light were observed separately for a wide range of intensities and with spot sizes of 60 mu m. Stimulated Brillouin scattering was identified as the main mechanism for back-scattering with saturation at 20-30% reflection.