High-power laser radiation beams interacting with a rarefied, fully ionized plasmas are essentially unstable. This fact is mainly due to the excitation of various modes of plasma oscillations, most important of which are electron Langmuir waves and ion acoustic waves. The stimulated scattering processes destroy and deplete the pulse in the as it propagates. On the other hand, at the moderate level of instability, spectral properties of the scattered light may serve as optical diagnostics of the pulse propagation dynamics. Knowing the dynamics of the stimulated scattering processes is thus essential for such applications as inertial confinement fusion and laser-plasma based particle acceleration. This course shall also cover the general theoretical framework of the linear stability theory, which is applicable to most coupled-wave systems in physics and engineering. Elements of theory of fluctuations in the uniform, non-magnetized plasmas shall describe the source of the instability, yielding further insight into the spectral properties of the unstable modes.

Lectures will be mostly based on original research papers. Recommended additional reading includes Plasma Electrodynamics by A. I. Akhiezer et al. (Ch. 4, 6, 8, 11), Physical Kinetics: Volume 10 (Course of Theoretical Physics) by L. P. Pitaevskii and E. M. Lifshitz (Chapter 6), Mechanics: Volume 1 (Course of Theoretical Physics) by L. D. Landau and E. M. Lifshitz (Chapter 5, §27), Perturbation Methods by A. H. Naifeh (Chapters 3.1.2, 5.5.2, 5.6.2, 6.2.4), Methods of Theoretical Physics by P. M. Morse and H. Feshbach (Chapter 5).

The grade in this course will be pass/fail determined predominantly by class participation. Each week, some students will be asked to discuss original research papers or selected topics/problems from the literature. As a part of the grading, in the end of the semester, each student will prepare 20-25 min presentation-tutorial of the topic of his/her choice.