Visible supercontinuum radiation of light bullets in the femtosecond filamentation of IR pulses in fused silica

Abstract

We report experimental and theoretical investigations of visible supercontinuum generation in the formation of light bullets in a filament produced by IR pulses. In the filamentation of a pulse in fused silica, bright tracks are recorded resulting from the recombination glow of carriers in the laser plasma produced by a sequence of light bullets and from the scattering in silica of the visible supercontinuum generated by the light bullets. It is found that the formation of a light bullet is attended with an outburst of a certain portion of supercontinuum energy in the visible range. The energy outburst is the same for all bullets in the sequence and becomes smaller with increasing pulse wavelength.