title: Low-level saturation of Brillouin backscattering due to cavity formation in high-intensity laser-plasma interaction.
abstract: Full particle-in-cell simulations of Brillouin backscattering in the high-intensity regime are presented. The final state of the strongly nonlinear evolution of the ion-acoustic wave packet consists of its collapse and the formation of a density cavity which is supported by large-amplitude localized electromagnetic fields. The cavitation manifests itself in large oscillations of the reflectivity which is terminated by a low-level saturation with strong kinetic effects. This newly discovered scenario demonstrates the importance of fully kinetic descriptions of Brillouin backscattering for high intensities.
authors.affiliation: Centre Lasers Intenses et Applications (CELIA), UMR 5107 CNRS-Université Bordeaux 1-CEA, Université Bordeaux 1, 33405 Talence, France.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Weber
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Riconda
authors.forename: V T
authors.initials: VT
authors.lastname: Tikhonchuk