Related papers: Transition from plasma- to Kerr-driven laser filam…
Filamentation of high-power femtosecond laser pulses in air is accompanied by a fairly strong release of optical energy into the propagation medium due to laser-induced ionization of air molecules and production of an underdense plasma of…
The interaction between a large number of laser filaments brought together using weak external focusing leads to the emergence of few filamentary structures reminiscent of standard filaments, but carrying a higher intensity. The resulting…
Recently energy exchange between two filaments crossing at small angle and with power slightly above the critical for self-focusing $P_{cr}$ was experimentally demonstrated. In this paper we present a model describing the process of this…
We analytically calculate the transverse energy fluxes that would be respectively induced in high-power Airy beams by the Kerr self-focusing and the Airy profile itself if they were the only active process. In experimental condition…
Four-wave mixing (FWM) is an efficient source of light waves emitted at various frequencies, usually associated with third-order optical nonlinearities. Whereas attention has mostly been paid in the past to the generation of Stokes (e.g.,…
The recent measurement of negative higher-order Kerr effect (HOKE) terms in gases has given rise to a controversial debate, fed by its impact on short laser pulse propagation. By comparing the experimentally measured yield of the third and…
The impact of nonadiabatic laser-induced molecular alignment on filamentation is numerically studied. Weak and strong field model of impulsive molecular alignment are compared in the context of nonlinear pulse propagation. It is shown that…
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…
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…
In a uniform radio-frequency (RF) plasma between a large electrode pair, the addition of an axial magnetic field induces diverse longitudinal filaments. To reveal its pattern dynamics, we conduct two-dimensional (2D) Particle-In-Cell (PIC)…
Four-wave parametric amplification can be extended to the TW/cm$^2$ regime using femtosecond pump pulses to amplify nearly octave spanning pulses with gain $> 20$~mm$^{-1}$, which we call Kerr instability amplification. Cross-polarized wave…
Generation of relativistic electron (RE) beams during ultraintense laser pulse interaction with plasma targets is studied by collisional particle-in-cell (PIC) simulations. Strong magnetic field with transverse scale length of several local…
We investigate experimentally the plasma dynamics of a centimeter-scale, laser filamentation-guided spark discharge. Using electrical and optical diagnostics to study monopolar discharges with varying current pulses we show that plasma…
Calculations are performed of the phase shift caused by the spatial modulation in the plasma density due to interference between a strong pump pulse and a weak probe pulse. It is suggested that a recent experiment [Loriot et al., Opt.…
Broadband laser sources based on supercontinuum generation by femtosecond laser filamentation have enabled applications from stand-off sensing and spectroscopy to the generation and self-compression of high-energy few-cycle pulses.…
We show that, for 200 fs light pulses at 790 nm, the formation of filaments is strongly affected by the laser light polarization . Filamentation does not exist for a pure circularly polarized light, propagating in vacuum before focusing in…
We obtain the deflection angle for a boosted Kerr black hole in the weak field approximation. We also study the behavior of light in the presence of plasma by considering different distributions: singular isothermal sphere, non-singular…
We investigate beam pointing dynamics in filamentation in gases driven by high repetition rate femtosecond laser pulses. Upon suddenly exposing a gas to a kilohertz train of filamenting pulses, the filament is steered from its original…
Passive mode-locking critically relies on a saturable loss mechanism to form ultrashort pulses. However, in Kerr-lens mode-locking (KLM), no actual absorption takes place, but rather losses appear due to diffraction, and actual light must…
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…