Picosecond laser filamentation in air

Abstract

The propagation of intense picosecond laser pulses in air in the presence of strong nonlinear self-action effects and air ionization is investigated experimentally and numerically. The model used for numerical analysis is based on the nonlinear propagator for the optical field coupled with the rate equations for the production of various ionic species and plasma temperature. Our results show that the phenomenon of plasma-driven intensity clamping, which is paramount in femtosecond laser filamentation, holds for picosecond pulses. Furthermore, the temporal pulse distortions are limited and the pulse fluence is also clamped. The resulting unique feature of the picosecond filamentation regime is the production of a broad, fully ionized air channel, continuous both longitudinally and transversely, which may be instrumental for numerous applications.

arXiv comment5 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (3)

• Ultrashort filaments of light in weakly-ionized, optically-transparent media
• Direct measurement of the electron density of extended femtosecond laser pulse-induced filaments
• Superfilamentation in air

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Shaping convex edges in borosilicate glass by single pass perforation with an Airy beam
• Memory effects in the long-wave infrared avalanche ionization of gases: A review of recent progress
• Air hydrodynamics of the ultrafast laser-triggered spark gap
• High-power sub-picosecond filamentation at 1.03 μm with high repetition rates between 10 and 100 kHz
• Generation of high quality sub-two-cycle pulses by self-cleaning of spatiotemporal solitons in air-plasma channels
• High-energy tunable ultraviolet pulses generated by optical leaky wave in filamentation