Statistical parameters of femtosecond laser pulse post-filament propagation on 65m air path with localized optical turbulence

TL;DR

This study investigates how localized optical turbulence affects femtosecond laser pulse filamentation over 65 meters in air, revealing that turbulence before filamentation increases hot spots, while turbulence within the filamentation region has minimal impact.

Contribution

It provides the first combined experimental and theoretical analysis of femtosecond laser pulse behavior after filamentation in turbulent air over a long distance.

Findings

Turbulence before filamentation increases the number and size of hot spots.

Turbulence within the filamentation region has little effect on postfilament structures.

The number of hot spots saturates with increasing turbulence strength.

Abstract

High-power femtosecond laser radiation propagates nonlinearly in air exhibiting pulse self-focusing and strong multiphoton medium ionization, which leads to the spatial fragmentation of laser pulse into highly-localized light channels usually called the filaments. The filaments are characterized by high optical intensity, reduced (even zero) angular spreading and can contain laser plasma or be plasmaless (postfilaments). The presence of optical turbulence on the propagation path dramatically changes pulse filamentation dynamics and in some cases causes pulse fragmentation enhancement and collapse arrest. For the first time to our knowledge, we experimentally and theoretically investigate the transverse profile of Ti:sapphire femtosecond laser radiation nonlinearly propagating a 65 m air path to the region of postfilament evolution after passing through an artificial localized air turbulence. We show that when a turbulent layer is placed before the filamentation region, the average number of high-intensive local fluence maxima ("hot points") in pulse profile as well as their sizes grow as the turbulence strength increases, and then saturates at some levels. On the contrary, the deposition of a turbulent screen within the filamentation region has almost no effect on both the number and the average diameter of the postfilaments.