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Saturation of the filament density of ultrashort intense laser pulses in air

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Abstract

We experimentally and numerically characterize multiple filamentation of laser pulses with incident intensities of a few TW/cm2. Propagating 100 TW laser pulses over 42 m in air, we observe a new propagation regime where the filament density saturates. As also evidenced by numerical simulations in the same intensity range, the total number of filaments is governed by geometric constraints and mutual interactions among filaments rather than by the available power in the beam.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Teramobile, GAP, Université de Genève, 20 rue de l’Ecole de Médecine, 1211, Genève 4, Switzerland

    S. Henin, Y. Petit, J. Kasparian & J.-P. Wolf

  2. Forschungszentrum Dresden-Rossendorf, Bautzner Landstraße 400, 01328, Dresden, Germany

    A. Jochmann, S. D. Kraft, S. Bock, U. Schramm & R. Sauerbrey

  3. Teramobile, Institut für Experimentalphysik, Freie Universität Berlin, Arnimallee 14, 14195, Berlin, Germany

    W. M. Nakaema, K. Stelmaszczyk, P. Rohwetter & L. Wöste

  4. CEA, DAM, DIF, 91297, Arpajon, France

    C.-L. Soulez, S. Mauger & L. Bergé

  5. Max Planck Institute for the Physics of Complex Systems, 01187, Dresden, Germany

    S. Skupin

  6. Institute of Condensed Matter Theory and Optics, Friedrich Schiller University, 07742, Jena, Germany

    S. Skupin

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  1. S. Henin
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  2. Y. Petit
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Correspondence to J. Kasparian.

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Henin, S., Petit, Y., Kasparian, J. et al. Saturation of the filament density of ultrashort intense laser pulses in air. Appl. Phys. B 100, 77–84 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00340-010-3941-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00340-010-3941-x

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