English

Linearity of charge measurement in laser filaments

Plasma Physics 2017-08-16 v1 Optics

Abstract

We evaluate the linearity of three electric measurement techniques of the initial electron density in laser filaments by comparing their results for a pair of filaments and for the sum of each individual filament. The conductivity measured between two plane electrodes in a longitudinal configuration is linear within 2% provided the electric field is kept below 100 kV/m. Furthermore, simulations show that the signal behaves like the amount of generated free electrons. The slow ionic current measured with plane electrodes in a parallel configuration is representative of the ionic charge available in the filament, after several μ\mus, when the free electrons have recombined. It is linear within 2% with the amount of ions and is insensitive to misalignment. Finally, the fast polarization signal in the same configuration deviates from linearity by up to 80% and can only be considered as a semi-qualitative indication of the presence of charges, e.g., to characterize the filament length.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1708.04510,
  title  = {Linearity of charge measurement in laser filaments},
  author = {Denis Mongin and Elise Schubert and Lorena de la Cruz and Nicolas Berti and Jérôme Kasparian and Jean-Pierre Wolf},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1708.04510},
  year   = {2017}
}

Comments

17 pages, 7 figures