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APS » Journals » Phys. Rev. Lett. » Volume 87 » Issue 21
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Phys. Rev. Lett. 87, 213902 (2001) [4 pages]

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

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S. Tzortzakis*, L. Sudrie, M. Franco, B. Prade, and A. Mysyrowicz
Laboratoire d'Optique Appliquée, CNRS UMR 7639, Ecole Nationale Supérieure de Techniques Avancées-Ecole Polytechnique, Chemin de la Hunière, F-91761 Palaiseau Cedex, France

A. Couairon† and L. Bergé
CEA/DAM-Ile de France, Bruyères-le-châtel, France

Received 27 March 2001; published 2 November 2001

See accompanying Physics Focus

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.

© 2001 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.87.213902
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.87.213902
PACS:
42.65.Jx, 42.25.Bs, 42.65.Re, 42.65.Sf

*Email address: stzortz@enstay.ensta.fr

†Present address: Centre de Physique Théorique, CNRS UMR 7644, F-91128 Palaiseau Cedex, France.

 
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