The nonlinear reflectivity of an inhomogeneous plasma slab in the strongly damped regime is investigated, taking into account the spatial and temporal characteristics of the thermal noise emission of waves. In the linear approximation, the spectral width corresponding to the frequencies that are effectively amplified is always found to be less than the spectral width of the unstable frequency domain. By conjecturing that this frequency filtering process remains valid in the nonlinear regime, the effective noise term appearing in Tang's formula [J. Appl. Phys. 37, 2945 (1966)] can be obtained analytically. The validity of this conjecture is numerically checked for different values of the inhomogeneity parameter. Conditions are given that must be satisfied for the validity of one-dimensional modeling of three-dimensional scattering.

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.55.4653