Nonlinear Propagation and Filamentation on 100 Meter Air Path of Femtosecond Beam Partitioned by Wire Mesh

Yuri E Geints (1) , Olga V Minina (1) , Ilia Yu Geints (1, 2) , Leonid V Seleznev (1, 3) , Dmitrii V Pushkarev (1, 3) , Daria V Mokrousova (1, 3) , Georgy E Rizaev (1, 3) , Daniil E Shipilo (3) , Irina A Nikolaeva (3) , Maria V Kurilova (2) , Nikolay A Panov (1, 3) , Olga G Kosareva (3) , Aurélien Houard (4) , Arnaud Couairon (5) , Andrey A Ionin (3) , Weiwei Liu (6)

1 IAO - V.E. Zuev Institute of Atmospheric Optics
2 MSU - Lomonosov Moscow State University
3 LPI RAS - P. N. Lebedev Physical Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences [Moscow]
4 LOA - Laboratoire d'optique appliquée
5 CPHT - Centre de Physique Théorique [Palaiseau]
6 Institute of Modern Optics

High-intensity (∼1 TW/cm2 and higher) region formed in the propagation of ∼60 GW, 90 fs Ti:Sapphire laser pulse on a ∼100 m path in air spans for several tens of meters and includes a plasma filament and a postfilament light channel. The intensity in this extended region is high enough to generate an infrared supercontinuum wing and to initiate laser-induced discharge in the gap between the electrodes. In the experiment and simulations, we delay the high-intensity region along the propagation direction by inserting metal-wire meshes with square cells at the laser system output. We identify the presence of a high-intensity region from the clean-spatial-mode distributions, appearance of the infrared supercontinuum wing, and occurrence of the laser-induced discharge. In the case of free propagation (without any meshes), the onset of the high-intensity zone is at 40–52 m from the laser system output with ∼30 m extension. Insertion of the mesh with 3 mm cells delays the beginning of the high-intensity region to 49–68 m with the same ∼30 m extension. A decrease in the cell size to 1 mm leads to both delay and shrinking of the high-intensity zone to 71–73 m and 6 m, respectively. Three-dimensional simulations in space confirm the mesh-induced delay of the high-intensity zone as the cell size decreases.

Mots clés: femtosecond filamentation; beam regularization; remote discharge triggering; infrared supercontinuum

Domaines: Optique [physics.optics]

Yuri E Geints, Olga V Minina, Ilia Yu Geints, Leonid V Seleznev, Dmitrii V Pushkarev, et al.. Nonlinear Propagation and Filamentation on 100 Meter Air Path of Femtosecond Beam Partitioned by Wire Mesh. Sensors, 2022, 22 (17), pp.6322. ⟨10.3390/s22176322⟩. ⟨hal-03777205⟩