Higher-order Kerr terms allow ionization-free filamentation in gases

Abstract

We show that higher-order nonlinear indices ($n_4$, $n_6$, $n_8$, $n_{10}$) provide the main defocusing contribution to self-channeling of ultrashort laser pulses in air and Argon at 800 nm, in contrast with the previously accepted mechanism of filamentation where plasma was considered as the dominant defocusing process. Their consideration allows to reproduce experimentally observed intensities and plasma densities in self-guided filaments.

11 pages, 6 figures (11 panels)

References in corpus (1)

• Ultrashort filaments of light in weakly-ionized, optically-transparent media

Cited by in corpus (7)

• Transition from plasma- to Kerr-driven laser filamentation
• Spectral dependence of purely-Kerr driven filamentation in air and argon
• Fermionic light in common optical media
• Higher-order Kerr effect and harmonic cascading in gases
• Arbitrary-order non-linear contribution to self-steepening
• Modulational instability windows in the nonlinear Schrödinger equation involving higher-order Kerr responses
• 3D+1 Lorentz type soliton in air