Spectral dependence of purely-Kerr driven filamentation in air and argon

Abstract

Based on numerical simulations, we show that higher-order nonlinear indices (up to $n_8$ and $n_{10}$, respectively) of air and argon have a dominant contribution to both focusing and defocusing in the self-guiding of ultrashort laser pulses over most of the spectrum. Plasma generation and filamentation are therefore decoupled. As a consequence, ultraviolet wavelength may not be the optimal wavelengths for applications requiring to maximize ionization.

arXiv comment14 pages, 4 figures (14 panels)

References in corpus (5)

• Ultrashort filaments of light in weakly-ionized, optically-transparent media
• Higher-order Kerr terms allow ionization-free filamentation in gases
• Light Filaments Without Self Guiding
• Generalized Miller Formulae
• Supercontinuum generation of ultrashort laser pulses in air at different central wavelengths

Cited by in corpus (4)

• On negative higher-order Kerr effect and filamentation
• Third and fifth harmonics generation by tightly focused femtosecond pulses at 2.2 μm wavelength in air
• From higher-order Kerr nonlinearities to quantitative modeling of 3rd and 5th harmonic generation in argon
• Adiabatic Floquet model for the optical response in femtosecond filaments