Measurement of the dispersion of thermal ion-acoustic fluctuations in high-temperature laser plasmas using multiple-wavelength Thomson scattering.

The dispersion of ion-acoustic fluctuations has been measured using a novel technique that employs multiple color Thomson-scattering diagnostics to measure the frequency spectrum for two separate thermal ion-acoustic fluctuations with significantly different wave vectors. The plasma fluctuations are shown to become dispersive with increasing electron temperature. We demonstrate that this technique allows a time resolved local measurement of electron density and temperature in inertial confinement fusion plasmas.