High-brightness switchable multi-wavelength remote laser in air

Abstract

Remote laser in air based on amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) has produced rather well-collimated coherent beams in both backward and forward propagation directions, opening up possibilities for new remote sensing approaches. The remote ASE-based lasers were shown to enable operation either at ~391 and 337 nm using molecular nitrogen or at ~845 nm using molecular oxygen as gain medium, depending on the employed pump lasers. To date, a multi-wavelength laser in air that allows for dynamically switching the operating wavelength has not yet been achieved, although this type of laser is certainly of high importance for detecting multiple hazard gases. In this Letter, we demonstrate, for the first time to our knowledge, a harmonic-seeded switchable multi-wavelength laser in air driven by intense mid-infrared femtosecond laser pulses. Furthermore, population inversion in the multi-wavelength remote laser occurs at an ultrafast time-scale (i.e., less than ~200 fs) owing to direct formation of excited molecular nitrogen ions by strong-field ionization of inner-valence electrons, which is fundamentally different from the previously reported pumping mechanisms based either on electron recombination of ionized molecular nitrogen or on resonant two-photon excitation of atomic oxygen fragments resulting from resonant two-photon dissociation of molecular oxygen. The bright multi-wavelength laser in air opens the perspective for remote detection of multiple pollutants based on nonlinear spectroscopy.

18 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (2)

• Ultrashort filaments of light in weakly-ionized, optically-transparent media
• High gain backward lasing in air

Cited by in corpus (38)

• Population Redistribution among Multiple Electronic States of Molecular Nitrogen Ions in Strong Laser Fields
• Recollision induced superradiance of ionized nitrogen molecules
• Self-seeded lasing in ionized air pumped by 800 nm femtosecond laser pulses
• Backward stimulated radiation from filaments in Nitrogen gas and air pumped by circularly polarized 800 nm femtosecond laser pulses
• Remote creation of strong and coherent emissions in air with two-color ultrafast laser pulses
• Signature of superradiance from a nitrogen gas plasma channel produced by strong field ionization
• Rotational Quantum Beat Lasing Without Inversion
• Lasing of ambient air with microjoule pulse energy pumped by a multi terawatt IR femtosecond laser
• Gain dynamics of a free-space nitrogen laser pumped by circularly polarized femtosecond laser pulses
• Self-induced white-light seeding laser in a femtosecond laser filament
• Alignment-dependent fluorescence emission induced by tunnel ionization of carbon dioxide from lower-lying orbitals
• Real-time observation of dynamics in rotational molecular wave packets by use of "air laser" spectroscopy
• Impulsive rotational Raman scattering of N2 by a remote "air laser" in femtosecond laser filament
• Near-resonant Raman amplification in the rotational quantum wavepackets of nitrogen molecular ions generated by strong field ionization
• Amplification of intense light fields by nearly free electrons
• Coherent control of superradiance from nitrogen ions pumped with femtosecond pulses
• Electronic State Population Dynamics upon Ultrafast Strong Field Ionization and Fragmentation of Molecular Nitrogen
• Role of rotational coherence in femtosecond-pulse-driven nitrogen ion lasing
• Structured air lasing of N2+
• Harmonic-seeded remote laser emissions in N2-Ar, N2-Xe and N2-Ne mixtures: a comparative study
• Frustrated double ionization in two-electron triatomic molecules
• Exit momentum and instantaneous ionization rate of nonadiabatic tunneling ionization in elliptically polarized laser fields
• Controlling electron-electron correlation in frustrated double ionization of molecules with orthogonally polarized two-color laser fields
• Photon retention in coherently excited nitrogen ions
• N${}_2^{+}$ Lasing: Gain and Absorption in the Presence of Rotational Coherence
• Control of ${\text{N}}_2^{+}$ Air Lasing
• Amplification of light pulses with orbital angular momentum (OAM) in nitrogen ions lasing
• Controlling the polarization of nitrogen ion lasing
• Intertwined electron-nuclear motion in frustrated double ionization in driven heteronuclear molecules
• Electronic-vibrational dynamics and coherence in x-ray transient absorption of N2+ induced by strong-field ionization
• Laser Driven Fluorescence Emission in a Nitrogen Gas Jet at 100 MHz Repetition Rate
• Ramsey interferometry through coherent $X^2{\Sigma }_g^{+}-A^2{\Pi }_u-B^2{\Sigma }_u^{+}$ coupling and population transfer in N${}_2^{+}$ air laser
• Revisiting self-seeding mechanism by generating vector ultraviolet N${}_2^{+}$ lasing
• Polarization sensitive laser intensity inside femtosecond filament in air
• Backward air lasing actions induced by femtosecond laser filamentation: influence of population inversion lifetime
• Lasing without population inversion in air
• Nonadiabatic theory for subcycle ionic dynamics in multielectron tunneling ionization
• Externally seeded backward lasing radiation from femtosecond laser filament in nitrogen gas