Topologically constrained high intensity light propagation in air
Abstract
We experimentally demonstrate how spatiotemporal optical vortices (STOVs) control long-range atmospheric filamentation of intense laser pulses. High-power pulses long enough to overlap with the delayed rotational nonlinearity of air molecules undergo periodic collapse arrest events, each of which generates toroidal STOV pairs with +/- topological charge that separate and accumulate into increasingly squeezed arrays of +1 charges at the front of the pulse and -1 charges at the back. These dynamics manifest as periodic energy deposition peaks along the propagation path and a pulse envelope modulated into a temporal intensity comb. Filamentation in this regime can be understood in terms of self-organized, topologically constrained defect dynamics embedded within nonlinear wave propagation.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2603.09847,
title = {Topologically constrained high intensity light propagation in air},
author = {A. Goffin and L. Railing and G. Babic and H. M. Milchberg},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2603.09847},
year = {2026}
}