Propagation of non-diffracting intense ultraviolet beams

✍ Scribed by Olivier Chalus; Alexey Sukhinin; Alejandro Aceves; Jean-Claude Diels

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2008
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 413 KB
• Volume: 281
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0030-4018
• DOI: 10.1016/j.optcom.2008.02.033

✦ Synopsis

Ultraviolet pulses of 200 ps duration are focused in vacuum, and launched into the atmosphere through an aerodynamic window. Instead of diffracting, above a threshold of 100 mJ, the beam propagates in a self-induced waveguide in air. The peak electric field and beam profile are consistent with the eigenfunction of a modified nonlinear Schro ¨dinger equation. The evolution of the beam waist with distance is calculated by a combination of the nonlinear Schro ¨dinger equation and an equation for the nonlinear losses.