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Laser beams can be strongly compressed in a plasma by stimulated Raman backscattering in a time short compared to the time scale for filamentation instabilities to develop. Such a compression should make feasible multi-MJ multi-exawatt-laser pulses technologically challenging by other means. The compression efficiency can reach nearly $100%$ at the Langmuir wave breaking limit.
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Malkin et al. (1999) studied this question.
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