Abstract
We show that a simple diffractive phase element (DPE) can be used to manipulate at will the positions and energy of multiple filaments generated in fused silica under femtosecond pulsed illumination. The method allows obtaining three-dimensional distributions of controlled filaments whose separations can be in the order of few micrometers. With such small distances we are able to study the mutual coherence among filaments from the resulted interference pattern, without needing a two-arm interferometer. The encoding of the DPE into a phase-only spatial light modulator (SLM) provides an extra degree of freedom to the optical set-up, giving more versatility for implementing different DPEs in real time. Our proposal might be particularly suited for applications at which an accurate manipulation of multiple filaments is required.
Highlights
Short temporal light events can be regarded as excellent tools for accessing nonlinear optical effects, i.e., self-phase modulation, self-focusing, or plasma generation, due to the combination of spatially focused and femtosecond time scale pulsed light
In this manuscript, we experimentally showed that diffractive phase element (DPE) encoded into a phase-only spatial light modulator (SLM)
The spatial sampling procedure employed to construct each DPE allows having high accuracy and independent control over some physical parameters of filaments such as the energy coupled into the filaments or their positions within the fused silica crystal
Summary
Short temporal light events can be regarded as excellent tools for accessing nonlinear optical effects, i.e., self-phase modulation, self-focusing, or plasma generation, due to the combination of spatially focused and femtosecond time scale pulsed light. It is originated due to the balance of two main processes, pulse focusing by Kerr effect and defocusing caused by the plasma Regarding this topic, the coherent nature of the filaments [20] has been investigated by means of several optical setups/devices such as a diffraction-grating-based interferometer [21], collinear geometries with time-delayed pulses [22], variable linear arrays of supercontinuum sources [23] or programmable liquid crystal SLMs [24]. The different spatial locations of lenses within an array cause the corresponding focal energies to strongly depend on the initial irradiance distribution of the light source onto the plane of the lens array In this contribution we experimentally demonstrate a diffractive-based method to generate arbitrary three-dimensional distributions of filaments in fused silica with accurate control over the spatial locations of filaments.
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