Erratum: Controlling the stimulated Brillouin scattering of self-focusing nanosecond laser pulses in silica glasses [Phys. Rev. A83, 063829 (2011)

Abstract

Owing to an erroneous value of the multiphoton ionization coefficient σK , the action of the plasma response was underestimated in the numerical simulations discussed in Appendix B of our original paper. This mistake led us to conclude that almost no plasma-induced intensity saturation effect takes place when pump and Stokes peak intensities stay less than 5 TW/cm2. The corrected Fig. 14 below should replace Fig. 14 of our original paper. The new Fig. 14 clearly shows that both pump and Stokes pulses are affected by the self-generated plasma in this high-intensity regime. Dark blue and green curves follow from the numerical integration of the complete system including the corrected plasma contributions, whereas bright curves refer to the initial system discarding plasma generation (unchanged from the previous version). We observe that the plasma response reduces the maximum intensity of the pump pulse (dark blue curve) by about 1–2 TW/cm2 and keeps the intensity of the Stokes pulse (dark green curve) clamped at ∼2 TW/cm2. A second qualitative change introduced by the plasma is shown in Fig. 14(d): the Stokes intensity is amplified earlier in the middle of the sample for the unmodulated 27Pcr pump pulse. Apart from these differences, the nonlinear dynamics are, however, analogous to those where plasma generation is neglected. Therefore, the self-focusing properties of the unmodulated and modulated pulses discussed in the main body of our paper remain valid.