Crossed beam energy transfer: Assessment of the paraxial complex geometrical optics approach versus a time dependent paraxial method to describe experimental results
The Crossed Beam Energy Transfer (CBET) of two large laser beams is modeled using two approaches: (i) the time independent Paraxial Complex Geometrical Optics (PCGO) for stochastically distributed Gaussian shaped beamlets and (ii) the time dependent conventional paraxial propagation of smoothed laser beams. Each description of the laser propagation is coupled to a hydrodynamics code. Both approaches are compared in a well defined plasma configuration with density and velocity profiles corresponding to an inhomogeneous plasma, including a resonance zone in which the matching conditions for a resonant coupling between the two laser beams are fulfilled. The comparison is made for laser beams smoothed by random phase plates and for "regular beams" without speckles. The role of the laser speckles is also investigated for each approach. In general, a good agreement is found between the PCGO simulations and the fully time dependent paraxial type simulations, carried out with the code Harmony, past a transient period on the picosecond time scale. The PCGO based CBET model is applied to the hydrodynamics simulations of a CBET experiment, the results of which reproduce essential features of the experimental data. Based on these comparisons, performed for interaction parameters up to 2x1014W cm 2mm2, the PCGO approach proves to be a reliable method to be implemented in the hydrodynamics codes to describe the CBET in mm scale plasmas.