Studies of the laser filament instability in a semicollisional plasma

Abstract

The stability and nonlinear evolution of a laser filament in an underdense, semicollisional plasma are studied with a simulation code accounting for the ponderomotive and thermal effects together with the nonlocal electron transport. It is found that the filament is stable at low intensities, where the trapped laser power is below the self-focusing threshold. For larger powers, the filament is unstable with respect to bending. This instability, though predicted in theory (the m=1 mode), has not been seen so far in monospeckle modelling probably because of simulation symmetry. In our simulations an artificial noise source has been implemented in order to make nonsymmetric features appear. The instability leads to a complete breakup of the filament which reconstructs itself after some time and the process then repeats itself. Due to the filament instability the plasma sets in a regime of self-supported oscillations and results in temporal modulation and angular spreading of transmitted light. The numerical simulations are compared with theoretical predictions and experimental observations of speckle dynamics in the interaction of a randomized laser beam with preformed plasmas.