Femtosecond filamentation in transparent media

We review recent advances in laser cell surgery, and investigate the working mechanisms of femtosecond laser nanoprocessing in biomaterials with oscillator pulses of 80-MHz repetition rate and with amplified pulses of 1-kHz repetition rate. Plasma formation in water, the evolution of the temperature distribution, thermoelastic stress generation, and stress-induced bubble formation are numerically simulated for NA=1.3, and the outcome is compared to experimental results. Mechanisms and the spatial resolution of femtosecond laser surgery are then compared to the features of continuous-wave (cw) microbeams. We find that free electrons are produced in a fairly large irradiance range below the optical breakdown threshold, with a deterministic relationship between free-electron density and irradiance. This provides a large ‘tuning range’ for the creation of spatially extremely confined chemical, thermal, and mechanical effects via free-electron generation. Dissection at 80-MHz repetition rate is performed in the low-density plasma regime at pulse energies well below the optical breakdown threshold and only slightly higher than used for nonlinear imaging. It is mediated by free-electron-induced chemical decomposition (bond breaking) in conjunction with multiphoton-induced chemistry, and hardly related to heating or thermoelastic stresses. When the energy is raised, accumulative heating occurs and long-lasting bubbles are produced by tissue dissociation into volatile fragments, which is usually unwanted. By contrast, dissection at 1-kHz repetition rate is performed using more than 10-fold larger pulse energies and relies on thermoelastically induced formation of minute transient cavities with lifetimes <100 ns. Both modes of femtosecond laser nanoprocessing can achieve a 2–3 fold better precision than cell surgery using cw irradiation, and enable manipulation at arbitrary locations.

Mechanisms of femtosecond laser nanosurgery of cells and tissues

Driven by functionality and purity demand for applications of inorganic nanoparticle colloids in optics, biology, and energy, their surface chemistry has become a topic of intensive research interest. Consequently, ligand-free colloids are ideal reference materials for evaluating the effects of surface adsorbates from the initial state for application-oriented nanointegration purposes. After two decades of development, laser synthesis and processing of colloids (LSPC) has emerged as a convenient and scalable technique for the synthesis of ligand-free nanomaterials in sealed environments. In addition to the high-purity surface of LSPC-generated nanoparticles, other strengths of LSPC include its high throughput, convenience for preparing alloys or series of doped nanomaterials, and its continuous operation mode, suitable for downstream processing. Unscreened surface charge of LSPC-synthesized colloids is the key to achieving colloidal stability and high affinity to biomolecules as well as support materials,...

Laser Synthesis and Processing of Colloids: Fundamentals and Applications

Modern laser sources nowadays deliver ultrashort light pulses reaching few cycles in duration and peak powers exceeding several terawatt (TW). When such pulses propagate through optically transparent media, they first self-focus in space and grow in intensity, until they generate a tenuous plasma by photo-ionization. For free electron densities and beam intensities below their breakdown limits, these pulses evolve as self-guided objects, resulting from successive equilibria between the Kerr focusing process, the chromatic dispersion of the medium and the defocusing action of the electron plasma. Discovered one decade ago, this self-channeling mechanism reveals a new physics, widely extending the frontiers of nonlinear optics. Implications include long-distance propagation of TW beams in the atmosphere, supercontinuum emission, pulse shortening as well as high-order harmonic generation. This review presents the landmarks of the 10-odd-year progress in this field. Particular emphasis is laid on the theoretical modeling of the propagation equations, whose physical ingredients are discussed from numerical simulations. The dynamics of single filaments created over laboratory scales in various materials such as noble gases, liquids and dielectrics reveal new perspectives in pulse shortening techniques. Far-field spectra provide promising diagnostics. Attention is also paid to the multifilamentation instability of broad beams, breaking up the energy distribution into small-scale cells along the optical path. The robustness of the resulting filaments in adverse weathers, their large conical emission exploited for multipollutant remote sensing, nonlinear spectroscopy and the possibility of guiding electric discharges in air are finally addressed on the basis of experimental results.

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/0034-4885/70/10/R03/pdf

Ultrashort filaments of light in weakly ionized, optically transparent media

Most long-path remote spectroscopic studies of the atmosphere rely on ambient light or narrow-band lasers. High-power femtosecond laser pulses have been found to propagate in the atmosphere as dynamically self-guided filaments that emit in a continuum from the ultraviolet to the infrared. This white light exhibits a directional behavior with enhanced backward scattering and was detected from an altitude of more than 20 kilometers. This light source opens the way to white-light and nonlinear light detection and ranging applications for atmospheric trace-gas remote sensing or remote identification of aerosols. Air ionization inside the filaments also opens promising perspectives for laser-induced condensation and lightning control. The mobile femtosecond-terawatt laser system, Teramobile, has been constructed to study these applications.

https://science.sciencemag.org/content/sci/301/5629/61.full.pdf

White-light filaments for atmospheric analysis.

Supercontinuum emission observed upon filamentation of transform-limited collimated femtosecond laser pulses in a transparent condensed medium (fused KU-1 quartz) is studied experimentally and numerically. The splitting of diverging conical supercontinuum emission into discrete rings was observed with increasing the pulse energy.

Discrete conical emission rings observed upon filamentation of a femtosecond laser pulse in quartz

We have demonstrated experimentally and numerically the possibility of controlling parameters of plasma channels formed during filamentation of a femtosecond laser pulse by introducing astigmatism in the laser beam wavefront. It is found that weak astigmatism increases the length of the plasma channel in comparison with the case of aberration-free focusing and that strong astigmatism can cause splitting of the plasma channel into two channels located one after another on the filament axis.

Plasma channels during filamentation of a femtosecond laser pulse with wavefront astigmatism in air

Experimental and numerical studies of a temporal evolution of a light bullet formed in isotropic LiF by mid-IR femtosecond pulse (2600–3350 nm) of power, slightly exceeding the critical power for self-focusing, are presented. For the first time regular oscillations of the light bullet field peak amplitude during its propagation in a filament were registered by investigation of induced color centers in LiF. It was revealed that color centers in a single laser pulse filament have the strictly periodic structure with a length of separate sections about 30 μm, which increases with a laser pulse wavelength decreasing. It was shown that the origin of a light bullet modulation is a periodical change of the light field amplitude of a near single-cycle wave packet in a filament, due to a difference of the wave packet group velocity and the carrier wave phase velocity.

Regular ‘breathing’ of a near-single-cycle light bullet in mid-IR filament

The filamentation of a femtosecond laser pulse in atmosphere under the joint influence of turbulence and aerosol has been numerically studied for the first time. A result of these studies is that the presence of aerosol in a turbulent atmosphere increases the distance to the onset of multifilamentation. We have studied the competition between two factors of aerosol coherent scattering in the process of multiple filamentation of a femtosecond pulse in the atmosphere: generation of light field perturbations and energy losses. Similarity parameters have been determined for different conditions in the problem of multifilamentation in aerosol.

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Multifilamentation of high-power femtosecond laser pulse in turbulent atmosphere with aerosol

A law determining the dispersion shift of the anti-Stokes band of the supercontinuum of a light bullet in a filament of a femtosecond laser pulse in transparent dielectrics has been established. The dispersion equation theoretically obtained for the anti-Stokes shift has been confirmed by spectroscopic studies of the filamentation of the near and middle infrared ranges in fused silica and fluorides.

V.P. Kandidov

Papers

Discrete conical emission rings observed upon filamentation of a femtosecond laser pulse in quartz

Plasma channels during filamentation of a femtosecond laser pulse with wavefront astigmatism in air

Regular ‘breathing’ of a near-single-cycle light bullet in mid-IR filament

Multifilamentation of high-power femtosecond laser pulse in turbulent atmosphere with aerosol

Dispersion of the anti-Stokes band in the spectrum of a light bullet of a femtosecond filament