Femtosecond filamentation in air and higher-order nonlinearities

According to a recent experiment, the instantaneous electronic Kerr effect in air exhibits a strong intensity dependence, the nonlinear refractive index switching sign and crossing over from a self-focusing to a defocusing nonlinearity. A subsequent theoretical work has demonstrated that this has pa...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Optics letters 2010-08, Vol.35 (15), p.2550-2552
Main Authors: KOLESIK, M, WRIGHT, E. M, MOLONEY, J. V
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Beam trapping, self-focusing and defocusing
self-phase modulation
Exact sciences and technology
Fundamental areas of phenomenology (including applications)
Nonlinear optics
Optics
Physics
Ultrafast processes
optical pulse generation and pulse compression
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Summary:According to a recent experiment, the instantaneous electronic Kerr effect in air exhibits a strong intensity dependence, the nonlinear refractive index switching sign and crossing over from a self-focusing to a defocusing nonlinearity. A subsequent theoretical work has demonstrated that this has paradigm-changing consequences for the understanding of filamentation in air, so it is important to subject the idea of higher-order nonlinearities to stringent tests. Here we use numerical modeling to propose an experiment capable of discriminating between the standard and the new intensity-dependent Kerr-effect models.
ISSN:0146-9592
1539-4794
DOI:10.1364/OL.35.002550