# Stationary and stable light beam propagation in Kerr media with nonlinear absorption with controllable dissipation patterns

## TL;DR

This paper demonstrates the stable propagation of light beams with customizable intensity and dissipation patterns in Kerr media with nonlinear absorption, enabling the creation of tailored plasma channels.

## Contribution

It introduces a method for controlling light beam dissipation patterns in Kerr media with nonlinear absorption, including the formation of plasma channels with specific geometries.

## Key findings

- Stable propagation of arbitrary intensity patterns
- Generation of tailored plasma channels
- Analysis of formation laws from Bessel beam superpositions

## Abstract

We report on the stationary and robust propagation of light beams with rather arbitrary and controllable intensity and dissipation transverse patterns in self-focusing Kerr media with nonlinear absorption. When nonlinear absorption is due to multi-photon ionization at high beam powers in transparent media such as glasses or air, these beams can generate multiple plasma channels with tailored geometries. Their nature and spatial characteristics are discussed in detail, as well as the laws determining their spontaneous formation from coherent superpositions of Bessel beams of different amplitudes and topological charges.