Self-Guided Propagation of Ultrashort IR Laser Pulses in Fused Silica

Stellios Tzortzakis (1) , Lionel Sudrie (1) , Michel A. Franco (1) , Bernard Prade (1) , André Mysyrowicz (1) , Arnaud Couairon (2) , Luc Bergé (2)

1 LOA - Laboratoire d'optique appliquée
2 DPTA - Département de Physique Théorique et Appliquée

We report self-guided propagation of ultrashort IR laser pulses in fused silica over several Rayleigh lengths. Self-guiding is accompanied by pulse splitting and time compression. Numerical simulations involving pulse self-focusing, temporal dispersion, and multiphoton ionization are found to be in good agreement with the experimental results. They show that a quasidynamic equilibrium between multiphoton ionization and self-focusing drives the filamentation process, while temporal dispersion plays a negligible role.

Keywords: filamentation; nonlinear optics

Domains: Optics [physics.optics]

Stellios Tzortzakis, Lionel Sudrie, Michel A. Franco, Bernard Prade, André Mysyrowicz, et al.. Self-Guided Propagation of Ultrashort IR Laser Pulses in Fused Silica. Physical Review Letters, 2001, 87 (21), pp.213902. ⟨10.1103/PhysRevLett.87.213902⟩. ⟨hal-00463709⟩