Superfilamentation in Air

Point, Guillaume; Brelet, Yohann; Houard, Aurélien; Jukna, Vytautas; Milián, Carles; Carbonnel, Jérôme; Liu, Yi; Couairon, Arnaud; Mysyrowicz, A.

doi:10.1103/physrevlett.112.223902

Cited by 90 publications

(58 citation statements)

References 32 publications

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“…Moreover, the light filaments tend to carry a power totalling on the order of 10-15% of the total power in the beam, leaving the remainder to act as an energy reservoir to source new hot spots downstream 12,14 . Recent experimental works include the extension of a single low power 800 nm filament path by an order of magnitude by using a dressing beam 15,16 and the creation of so-called super-filaments with multiterawatt pulses by attempting to compress multiple filaments into a single super-filament 17 . Among the obvious disadvantages of 800 nm filaments, whether single dressed or multiple compressed, is strong recurrent plasma generation, which tends to defocus and dissipate energy, thereby limiting extension along the propagation path.…”

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confidence: 99%

Super high power mid-infrared femtosecond light bullet

et al. 2015

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Mid-infrared ultrashort high energy laser sources are opening up new opportunities in science, including keV-class high harmonic generation and monoenergetic MeV-class proton acceleration. As new higher energy sources become available, potential applications for atmospheric propagation can dramatically grow to include stand-off detection, laser communications, shock-driven remote terahertz enhancement and extended long-lived thermal waveguides to transport high power microwave and radiofrequency waves. We reveal a new paradigm for long-range, low-loss, ultrahigh power ultrashort pulse propagation at mid-infrared wavelengths in the atmosphere. Before the onset of critical self-focusing, energy in the fundamental wave continually leaks into shock-driven spectrally broadened higher harmonics. A persistent near-invariant solitonic leading edge on the multi-terawatt pulse waveform transports most of the power over hundredmetre-long distances. Such light bullets are resistant to uncontrolled multiple filamentation and are expected to spark extensive research in optics, where the use of mid-infrared lasers is currently much under-utilized. U ltrafast femtosecond laser pulses possess the unique property that they deliver extreme local fields, avoid avalanche ionization and yet deposit relatively little energy, thereby avoiding significant collateral damage. In the context of long-range atmospheric propagation of multi-terawatt femtosecond-duration laser pulses, the Ti:sapphire laser has been the standard workhorse and has promoted atmospheric studies ranging from femtosecond LIDAR 1 , remote laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) 2,3 , white light generation 4 , discharge triggering and guiding 5-7 , lightning control 8 and filament-induced water-cloud condensation in the free, sub-saturated atmosphere 9 .However, high accumulated plasmas, which tend to strongly defocus the pulse 10 , abruptly terminate propagation of individual filaments over sub-metre-long paths. Despite the remarkable swathe of applications that have been enabled with this ultraintense laser source, the ability to launch a super-intense intact electromagnetic pulse over long distances remains elusive. The reason for this has been understood for some time and is due to the tendency of a relatively wide 800 nm multi-terawatt beam to break up into tens or hundreds of light filaments with typical waists on the order of 100 µm, originally initiated via modulational instability 11,12 .The nucleation of filaments at 800 nm is typically random in space, and is also influenced by aberrations on the beam induced in the multiple-pass cascaded stages of the Ti:sapphire amplifiers. Much effort has been expended on attempts to control or elongate intense light filaments 13 , but with limited success primarily because each filament tends to die and reappear chaotically at different locations along the propagation path. Moreover, the light filaments tend to carry a power totalling on the order of 10-15% of the total power in the beam, leaving the remainder to ac...

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Super high power mid-infrared femtosecond light bullet

et al. 2015

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“…In this case, one expect the formation, close to the geometric focus, of superfilaments with elongated plasma column and densities exceeding by order of magnitude the plasma density found in a single filament. 19 Such a high density plasma column corresponds to a cylindric source responsible for the observed acoustic pattern in the far field. Note that shockwaves with a similar cylindrical shape were observed in Ref.…”

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confidence: 99%

Underwater acoustic signals induced by intense ultrashort laser pulse

Brelet

Jarnac

Carbonnel

et al. 2015

The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America

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“…18, a chirped pulse amplified laser system emitting at a wavelength of 800 nm is used to produce the filaments between the two electrodes and inside the Marx generator. The laser pulse with energy of 200 mJ, pulse duration of 700 fs and diameter of 30 mm FWHM is focused by a convex lens (focal f = 5 m), generating a bundle of plasma channels over 1.5 m before the geometrical focus of the lens (see characterization of the filament bundle in ref 19). The geometrical focus of the beam was positioned 30 cm after the Marx entrance electrode in order to trigger the Marx generator as well as the guided discharge.…”

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Prolongation of the lifetime of guided discharges triggered in atmospheric air by femtosecond laser filaments up to 130 μs

Arantchouk

Honnorat

Thouin

et al. 2016

Applied Physics Letters

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Abstract:The triggering and guiding of electric discharges produced in atmospheric air by a compact 100 kV Marx generator is realized in laboratory using an intense femtosecond laser pulse undergoing filamentation. We describe here an approach allowing extending the lifetime of the discharges by injecting a current with an additional circuit. Laser guiding discharges with a length of 8.5 cm and duration of 130 µs were obtained.In the last decade femtosecond laser filaments has proved to be a powerful tool to trigger and guide electric discharges in atmospheric air 1 with gap length of a few meters [2][3][4][5][6] . The weakly ionized plasma column and subsequent low density channel generated by laser filaments allow the precise triggering and guiding of electric discharges between two electrodes with a significant reduction of the breakdown voltage [7][8][9] . This effect is potentially useful for the development of laser lightning rod 4, 10-11 , high-voltage, high-current switches 12 , or virtual plasma antennas [13][14] .For applications such as plasma antennas, extension of the filament plasma lifetime is needed, since the plasma from the filament recombines in a few nanoseconds, seriously limiting the bandwidth of antennas to frequencies v> 10 9 Hz. This can be done using additional femtosecond or nanosecond laser pulses 15-17 but this technique is particularly complex and the resulting plasma is limited to a few µs. Injection of electric current through guided discharges appears to be a more promising way. The duration of the guided discharge mostly depends on the high voltage (HV) source, with a typical duration on the order of 100 ns [2][3][4]14 . In several publications, a Marx generator was used as the HV source to produce meter scale guided discharges. In this case, the discharge duration is defined by the product of the Marx "stack" capacitance C marx and a discharge load R load . In Ref. 18, a compact Marx generator was used to create a ~ 21 cm guided discharge of duration about 600 ns due to the mentioned Marx capacitance C max ~ 2 nF and the discharge load resistance R d ~ 300 Ω. In this letter we describe a method, which allows prolonging this parameter up to 130 µs. The experiment setup is presented in Fig. 1. The circuit is composed of two parts. The first part is a Marx generator described in 18. For this experiment the generator was composed of 5 stages charged up to 20 kV DC, resulting in 100 kV output pulse with a negative polarity. An inductance L 1 was connected to the generator output electrode and served as a load up to the moment when the Marx pulse produces a breakdown in the inter-electrode gap. The Marx output electrode has a cylinder form with an axial hole allowing the laser beam to enter in the generator and to trigger it. The second electrode is a round finger with a 5 mm radius. As described in Ref. 18, a chirped pulse amplified laser system emitting at a wavelength of 800 nm is used to produce the filaments between the two electrodes and inside the Marx generator. The laser pul...

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Superfilamentation in Air

Cited by 90 publications

References 32 publications

Super high power mid-infrared femtosecond light bullet

Super high power mid-infrared femtosecond light bullet

Underwater acoustic signals induced by intense ultrashort laser pulse

Prolongation of the lifetime of guided discharges triggered in atmospheric air by femtosecond laser filaments up to 130 μs

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