Long lifetime air plasma channel generated by femtosecond laser pulse sequence

Xiao-Long Liu,Zhao-Hua Wang,Yu-Tong Li,Xu-Lei Ge,Li-Ming Chen,Liu-Bin Feng,Hao Teng,Jie Zhang,Quan-Li Dong,Jing-Long Ma,Xin Lu,Wei-Min Wang,Zhi-Yi Wei,Yi Zheng

doi:10.1364/oe.20.005968

Abstract

Lifetime of laser plasma channel is significantly prolonged using femtosecond laser pulse sequence, which is generated from a chirped pulse amplification laser system with pure multi-pass amplification chain. Time-resolved fluorescence images and electrical conductivity measurement are used to characterize the lifetime of the plasma channel. Prolongation of plasma channel lifetime up to microsecond level is observed using the pulse sequence.

Highlights

Lifetime of plasma channel generated by femtosecond laser pulse in air [1,2,3,4] is one of the key parameters for conductivity based applications, such as guiding high-voltage (HV) discharge and controlling the lighting [5,6,7,8,9,10,11]
Lifetime of laser plasma channel is significantly prolonged using femtosecond laser pulse sequence, which is generated from a chirped pulse amplification laser system with pure multi-pass amplification chain
Timeresolved fluorescence images and electrical conductivity measurement are used to characterize the lifetime of the plasma channel

Summary

Introduction

Lifetime of plasma channel generated by femtosecond (fs) laser pulse in air [1,2,3,4] is one of the key parameters for conductivity based applications, such as guiding high-voltage (HV) discharge and controlling the lighting [5,6,7,8,9,10,11]. Prolonging of the channel lifetime by adding a delayed long laser pulse has been investigated and practiced in filament triggered HV discharge experiment [12,13,14,15]. Multiple fs laser pulses have been used in the experiment to further prolong the lifetime of the plasma channel [16,17]. Ji et al investigated the lifetime of the plasma channel produced by fs laser pulse sequence, generated by adjusting the regenerative amplifier in the traditional chirped pulse amplification (CPA) system. They generated a sequence of about 6 pulses and prolonged the lifetime of the plasma channel up to about 90 ns [17]. A study of lifetime of the plasma channel generated by laser sequence and single fs laser shows that use of the pulse sequence can significantly prolong the lifetime of the plasma channel

Experiment setup

Experiment results and discussions

Conclusion