Characteristics of self-guided laser plasma channels generated by femtosecond laser pulses in air

Abstract

Generation of a long plasma channel by femtosecond laser pulses is investigated. The results show that the balance between the nonlinear self-focusing of the laser beam and plasma defocusing forms a long plasma channel, which guides the laser beam to propagate a long distance in air. This phenomenon can be used to trigger lightning.

Femtosecond Filamentation in Air

“…This measurement is in agreement with numerical results [10,20,47]. Yang et al [92] measured the phase contrast and obtained similar results. Several groups announced the presence of filaments with a millimeter size after a propagation over several tens of meters [9,29,56].…”

“…The values published for the mean plasma density in a filament vary over several orders of magnitude between 10 14 and 10 17 cm −3 [8,72,85,92]. This great Fig.…”

“…Several groups gave persistent reports on multifilamentary structures propagating over several hundreds of meters [9,29,64,92]. The formation of filaments at kilometric distances in the sky was also reported from the detection of the supercontinuum by a telescope [70,89].…”

Virtual hyperbolic metamaterials for manipulating radar signals in air

“…At the same time, electrons participate in three-body reaction with rate Z 3 and two-body reaction with rate Z 2 , which leads to the creation of negative molecular ions (O À 2 ) and negative ions (O À ), respectively. Therefore, the total attachment rate coefficient 18,19 …”

Dynamics of strong-field laser-induced microplasma formation in noble gases

“…A considerable amount of research has focused on determining the electron concentration in fs laser-induced plasmas including interferometry [13,14], longitudinal diffractometry [15], in-line holographic imaging [16][17][18] electric conductivity [19,20] and shadowgraphic techniques. Shadowgraphic measurements are performed either by measuring the absorption of a probe laser as a consequence of inverse Bremsstrahlung [21] or the change in the refractive index gradient on a probe [22].…”