Pressure scaling of femtosecond laser filamentation in air: Prospects for long-range atmospheric propagation

Abstract

The principal trend of the last decades is the use of laser systems generating ultrashort (femtosecond) laser pulses of gigawatt and terawatt power in various spheres of human activity, in particular, in atmospheric researches. One of the important challenges within this problem is the use of the unique nonlinear optical phenomena manifesting in the atmosphere as pulse self-focusing, light-induced ionization of the medium, plasma generation and laser filamentation for remote laser diagnostics of the aerosol-gas constituents and efficient delivery of concentrated optical energy over long distances in the atmosphere. This brings to the forefront the problem of increasing the actual length of the nonlinear interaction of an ultrashort laser pulse with medium to kilometer distances whereas real physical length of most existing optical paths is usually limited by several hundred meters. We propose and theoretically substantiate an effective way to solve the problem of long-range atmospheric filamentation by transforming the propagation medium itself using short laboratory traces and optical cuvettes with gases of increased (over-atmospheric) pressure. Following the scaling laws of the optical characteristics of pressurized medium, the coefficients describing the interaction between optical wave and medium increase along with the increase in gas pressure. By the numerical simulations in the framework of the nonlinear Schrodinger equation, we show that this makes it possible to emulate kilometers-long atmospheric traces for laser beams of centimeter diameter and terawatt pulse power on the laboratory scale (tens of meters).