Suprathermal electrons from the anti-Stokes Langmuir decay instability cascade

The study of parametric instabilities has played a crucial role in understanding energy transfer to plasma and, with that, the development of key applications such as inertial confinement fusion. When the densities are between 0.11nc < ne < 0.14nc and the electron temperature is in inertial confinement fusion-relevant temperatures, anomalous hot electrons with kinetic energies above 100 keV are generated. Here a new electron acceleration mechanism???the anti-Stokes Langmuir decay instability cascade of forward stimulated Raman scattering???is investigated. This mechanism potentially explains anomalous energetic electron generation in indirectly driven inertial confinement fusion experiments, it also provides a new way of accelerating electrons to higher energy for applications such as novel x-ray sources.