Filamentation of ultrashort laser pulses in silica glass and KDP crystals: A comparative study

Jérémie Rolle (1) , Luc Bergé (1) , Guillaume Duchateau (2) , Stefan Skupin (2)

1 DPTA - Département de Physique Théorique et Appliquée
2 CELIA - Centre d'Etudes Lasers Intenses et Applications

Ionizing 800-nm femtosecond laser pulses propagating in silica glass and in potassium dihydrogen phosphate (KDP) crystal are investigated by means of a unidirectional pulse propagation code. Filamentation in fused silica is compared with the self-channeling of light in KDP accounting for the presence of defect states and electron-hole dynamics. In KDP, laser pulses produce intense filaments with higher clamping intensities up to 200 TW/cm² and longer plasma channels with electron densities above 10¹⁶ cm⁻³. Despite these differences, the propagation dynamics in silica and KDP are almost identical at equivalent ratios of input power over the critical power for self-focusing.

Domaines: Optique [physics.optics]; Physique des plasmas [physics.plasm-ph]

Jérémie Rolle, Luc Bergé, Guillaume Duchateau, Stefan Skupin. Filamentation of ultrashort laser pulses in silica glass and KDP crystals: A comparative study. Physical Review A : Atomic, molecular, and optical physics [1990-2015], 2014, 90, pp.023834. ⟨10.1103/PhysRevA.90.023834⟩. ⟨hal-01076943⟩