Parametric instabilities of intense lasers from interaction with relativistic hot plasmas

The stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) and relativistic modulational instability (RMI) of intense lasers in relativistic hot plasmas are studied, using the waterbag distribution in momentum space. Two cases are considered: a single hot electron distribution and a cold plasma attached with a hot electron tail. It is shown that both high temperatures and hot electron tails can significantly reduce the instability growth rates, shift the unstable regions in the wave-vector space, and change the Raman scattering frequency spectra from the cold plasma theory. In particular, at low-light intensities, there exists a cutoff thermal velocity beyond which SRS is completely suppressed. At high-light intensities, no clear cutoff thermal velocity is found owing to the merging of SRS with RMI. © 2000 The American Physical Society.