Parametric Instabilities Study in a Shock Ignition Relevant Regime

Inertial Confinement Fusion with Shock Ignition relies on a very strong shock created by a laser pulse at an intensity of the order of 10(16)W/cm(2). In this context, an experimental campaign at the Prague Asterix Laser System (PALS) has been carried out within the frame of the HiPER project. Two beams have been used, the first to create an extended preformed plasma (scale length of the order of hundreds of micrometers) on a planar target, the second to generate a strong shock wave. Different diagnostics were used to study both the shock breakout at the rear surface of the target and the laser-plasma coupling and parametric instabilities. This paper is focused on back-scattering analysis to measure the back-reflected energy and to characterize parametric instabilities such as stimulated Brillouin and Raman scattering. Our experimental data show that parametric instabilities do not play a strong role in the laser plasma coupling. Moreover, preliminary analysis of the back reflected light from the interaction region shows that less than 5% of the total incident laser energy was back-reflected, with only a small fraction of that light was originating from parametric instabilities.