Relativistic Landau damping of electron plasma waves in stimulated Raman scattering

A new formulation of the kinetic (collisionless) electron plasma wave (EPW) damping rate in a relativistic thermal equilibrium plasma is presented, and evaluated for such waves in both forward and backward stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) in laser plasma interactions (LPI) in the temperature regime (5-15 keV) of current and near-future deutirium-tritium (DT) fusion plasma experiments. For LPI at typical values of (n(0)/n(cr)), the relativistic damping of the EPW in SRS in this temperature range, particularly for forward SRS, is found to be orders of magnitude smaller than one would predict from a nonrelativistic calculation of Landau damping for those EPW.