Examines Thomson scattering from inhomogeneous plasmas, suggesting enhanced analysis through new modeling techniques.
We formulate a theory of Thomson scattering (TS) from inhomogeneous plasmas using a ray-tracing approach. The scattered radiation is described within the eikonal approximation, including convective gain arising from scattering instabilities driven by the TS probe laser. In the limit of a weak probe and vanishing gain, the theory recovers the standard TS cross section and scattered power due to volumetric particle noise. The ray-tracing formalism is implemented in a TS fitting framework, enabling accurate analysis of inhomogeneous plasmas whose background profiles can be provided by large-scale hydrodynamic simulations or experimental diagnostics. Several examples of synthetic TS spectra are presented, and further extensions of the theory are discussed.
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Carleton et al. (2026) studied this question.
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