Abstract
We experimentally studied intense femtosecond pulse filamentation and propagation in water for Bessel-Gaussian beams with different numbers of radial modal lobes. The transverse modes of the incident Bessel-Gaussian beam were created from a Gaussian beam of a Ti:sapphire laser system by using computer generated hologram techniques. We found that filament propagation length increased with increasing number of lobes under the conditions of the same peak intensity, pulse duration, and the size of the central peak of the incident beam, suggesting that the radial modal lobes may serve as an energy reservoir for the filaments formed by the central intensity peak.
Highlights
Filamentation by femtosecond laser radiation,[1] propagating in nonlinear media, facilitates a number of applications, including remote sensing,[2] attosecond physics,[3,4] and lightning control.[5]In such settings, extended filaments are desirable, and various techniques aiming to prolong their length have been explored.[6,7] The substantial extension of optical filaments continues to attract considerable interest and much still remains to be understood.[8]
We found that filament propagation length increased with increasing number of lobes under the conditions of the same peak intensity, pulse duration, and the size of the central peak of the incident beam, suggesting that the radial modal lobes may serve as an energy reservoir for the filaments formed by the central intensity peak
The input beam patterns were created from an initial Gaussian beam of a Ti:sapphire laser system by using computer generated-holograms[30] displayed on a liquid crystal spatial light modulator (Hamamatsu LCOS-SLM X10468-2)
Summary
Filamentation by femtosecond laser radiation,[1] propagating in nonlinear media, facilitates a number of applications, including remote sensing,[2] attosecond physics,[3,4] and lightning control.[5]In such settings, extended filaments are desirable, and various techniques aiming to prolong their length have been explored.[6,7] The substantial extension of optical filaments continues to attract considerable interest and much still remains to be understood.[8]. (Received 22 October 2015; accepted 22 February 2016; published online 2 March 2016)
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