AUTHOR=Yuan Hang , Hao Jianing , Dan Ziqiang , Zhu Chengyu , Li Yuxin TITLE=Theoretical studies of high-power laser beam smoothing via stimulated brillouin scattering in plasma JOURNAL=Frontiers in Physics VOLUME=10 YEAR=2022 URL=https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/physics/articles/10.3389/fphy.2022.1019480 DOI=10.3389/fphy.2022.1019480 ISSN=2296-424X ABSTRACT=

To achieve uniform irradiation, the focal spot from a high-power laser system must be homogeneous; thus, laser beam smoothing is required. In this study, we theoretically demonstrated a novel spatial smoothing method based on stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) in a plasma. As SBS is sensitive to pump intensity, the area of higher intensity in the laser beam has a higher reflectivity, leading to a more homogeneous passed beam. From the theoretical simulation, the laser beam modulation significantly decreased in SBS, while the fluence contrast decreased from 15.9% to 9.7%.