Conical emission from self-guided femtosecond pulses in air

Erik T. Nibbering (1) , P. F. Curley (1) , Georges Grillon (1) , Bernard Prade (1) , Michel A. Franco (1) , François Salin (1) , André Mysyrowicz (1)

1 LOA - Laboratoire d'optique appliquée

Conical emission in the forward direction is observed from intense femtosecond light pulses propagating through air over long distances. The conical emission is attributed to Čerenkov radiation from a dynamic self-guiding structure consisting of a weakly ionized core surrounded by Kerr cladding.

Keywords: nonlinear optics; kerr effect; filamentation

Domains: Optics [physics.optics]

Erik T. Nibbering, P. F. Curley, Georges Grillon, Bernard Prade, Michel A. Franco, et al.. Conical emission from self-guided femtosecond pulses in air. Optics Letters, 1996, 21 (1), pp.62-65. ⟨10.1364/OL.21.000062⟩. ⟨hal-00465610⟩