Suppression of superluminous precursors in high-power backward Raman amplifiers.

The very promising scheme for producing ultrapowerful laser pulses through Raman backscattering of pump lasers in plasmas can be jeopardized by superluminous precursors. Growing from the leading part of the Raman pumped seed pulse, these precursors can disturb the plasma and the pump ahead of the pumped pulse. These ruinous effects, however, might be averted by a detuning, large enough to suppress the precursors, yet small enough to allow the desired backscatter effect.