Related papers: Femtosecond filamentation in air and higher-order …
We demonstrate that Freeman resonances have a strong impact on the nonlinear optical response in femtosecond filaments. These resonances decrease the transient refractive index within a narrow intensity window and strongly affect the…
An influence of pass-through optics on femtosecond laser pulse filamentation in ambient air is analyzed for the first time both experimentally and numerically. Propagation of high-power femtosecond laser pulse through solid optical elements…
Since their discovery in the mid-1990s, ultrafast laser filaments in gases have been described as products of a dynamic balance between Kerr self-focusing and defocusing by free electric charges that are generated via multi-photon…
The axial dependence of femtosecond filamentation in air is measured under conditions of varying laser pulsewidth, energy, and focusing f-number. Filaments are characterized by the ultrafast z-dependent absorption of energy from the laser…
In this Letter, a low-loss Kerr-driven optical filament in Krypton gas is experimentally reported in the ultraviolet. The experimental findings are supported by ab initio quantum calculations describing the atomic optical response.…
We test numerical filamentation models against experimental data about the peak intensity and filament density in laser filaments. We show that the consideration of the higher-order Kerr effect (HOKE) improves the quantitative agreement…
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…
Using an exactly soluble one-dimensional atomic model we explore the idea that the recently observed high-order nonlinearity in optical filaments is due to virtual transitions involving the continuum states. We show that the model's…
Femtosecond lasers interacting with Kerr nonlinear optical materials, propagate in form of filaments due to the balance of beam diffraction by self-focusing induced by the Kerr nonlinearity. Femtosecond laser filamentation is a universal…
The higher-order Kerr effect (HOKE) has been recently advocated to explain measurements of the saturation of the nonlinear refractive index in gases. Here we show that cascaded third-harmonic generation results in an effective fifth order…
As a contribution to the ongoing controversy about the role of higher-order Kerr effect (HOKE) in laser filamentation, we first provide thorough details about the protocol that has been employed to infer the HOKE indices from the…
The femtosecond laser filamentation is the result of the dynamic interplay between plasma self-focusing and defocusing generated by the multiphoton/tunnel ionization of air molecules. This equilibrium allows the filament to stably propagate…
Polarization dependence on clamping intensity inside femtosecond filament was experimentally measured in air. By tuning the laser pulse ellipse from linear polarization to circular polarization, the measured clamping intensity inside laser…
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…
The analysis of negative birefringence optically induced in major air components (Loriot et al., [1, 2]) is revisited in light of the recently reported plasma grating-induced phase-shift effect predicted for strong field pump-probe…
We present direct time- and space- resolved measurements of the electron density of femtosecond laser pulse-induced plasma filaments. The dominant nonlinearity responsible for extended atmospheric filaments is shown to be field-induced…
Dynamic Kerr effect measurements provide a simple realization of a nonlinear experiment. We propose a field-off experiment where an electric field of one or several sinusoidal cycles is applied to a sample in thermal equilibrium.…
We consider an optical nonlinear interferometric setup based on Young's double-slit configuration where a nonlinear material is placed exactly after one of the two slits. We examine the effects of Kerr nonlinearity and multi-photon…
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…
Linear stability analysis of speckle pattern resulting from multiple, diffuse scattering of coherent light waves in random media with intensity-dependent refractive index (noninstantaneous Kerr nonlinearity) is performed. The speckle…