The Use of Ultraviolet Thomson Scattering as a Versatile Diagnostic for Detailed Measurements of a Collisional Laser Produced Plasma : Biblioscholar : 9781288542710 : 1288542712 : 01 Jan 2013 : Collective Thomson scattering from ion-acoustic waves at 266nm is used to obtain spatially resolved, two-dimensional electron density, sound speed, and radial drift profiles of a collisional laser plasma. An ultraviolet diagnostic wavelength minimizes the complicating effects of inverse bremsstrahlung and refractive turning in the coronal region of interest, where the electron densities approach n{sub c}/10. Laser plasmas of this type are important because they model some of the aspects of the plasmas found in high-gain laser-fusion pellets irradiated by long pulse widths where the laser light is absorbed mostly in the corona. The experimental results and LASNEX simulations agree within a percent standard deviation of 40% for the electron density and 50% for the sound speed and radial drift velo