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.

We report the results of experimental and numerical investigation of the influence of the wavefront curvature of femtosecond light focused by an axicon on the length and position of plasma channels in the filament under conditions of normal and anomalous group velocity dispersion in fused silica. It is shown that a change in the wavefront curvature by a value much greater than the longitudinal dimensions of the filament noticeably changes the geometry of the plasma channel position. The role of axicon focusing for ordering multiple filamentation is studied experimentally.

Plasma channels in a filament of a femtosecond laser pulse focused by an axicon

Based on the stratified model of multiple coherent scattering of radiation in a dispersion medium, the nonlinear problem of the multiple filamentation of femtosecond laser pulses is studied by the Monte-Carlo method. It is shown that the modulation instability of a high-power light field, which develops on perturbations appearing upon coherent scattering by particles, causes the stochastic breakup of the pulse into numerous filaments. The influence of the size and concentration of particles in water aerosol on the generation of filamentation in a laser pulse is statistically estimated and the regions of different filamentation regimes are determined. The dynamic picture of the evolution of multiple filamentation and formation of plasma channels due to multiphoton ionisation upon aerosol scattering is obtained.

Multiple scattering, modulation instability, and filamentation of a femtosecond laser pulse in a dispersion medium

We present a numerical investigation of high-fluence energy transport by a femtosecond filament in air Our study shows that an increase of the initial pulse duration leads to an increase of this energy in the pulse and to its higher localization in the filament

Transport of high-fluence energy by femtosecond filament in air

It is shown that the diffraction reproduction of a periodically modulated wave field takes place when light propagates through Gaussian optical systems. Generally, such a reproduction is accompanied by image scaling. Equations are derived that relate the reproducton distance and scaling factor to the ABCD matrix elements of the optical system. The Talbot effect in a convergent (divergent) wave is considered.

V.P. Kandidov

Papers

Plasma channels in a filament of a femtosecond laser pulse focused by an axicon

Multiple scattering, modulation instability, and filamentation of a femtosecond laser pulse in a dispersion medium

Transport of high-fluence energy by femtosecond filament in air

Talbot effect in Gaussian optical systems

Scenario of multiple filamentation and supercontinuum generation in a high-power femtosecond laser pulse