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 inOptics letters Vol. 35; no. 15; p. 2550
Main Authors Kolesik, M, Wright, E M, Moloney, J V
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published United States 01.08.2010
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ISSN1539-4794
DOI10.1364/OL.35.002550

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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:1539-4794
DOI:10.1364/OL.35.002550