Creating Extended and Dense Plasma Channels in Air by Using Spatially and Temporally Shaped Ultra-Intense Laser Pulses.

摘要

Funds from this one-year grant supported one dedicated graduate student (Craig Ament) and the PI at 50%. The experimental research under this program was supporting the ongoing AFOSR MURI program on theoretical and numerical studies of femtosecond laser filamentation. The particular projects that we pursued in the course of this program are: 1. Creation of extended and dense plasma channels in air and other gases using a nanosecond-femtosecond dual-pulse laser excitation scheme. 2. Generation of regular arrays of plasma channels using femtosecond Bessel beams of higher order 3. Application of accelerating Airy temporal waveforms to ultrafast nonlinear optics 4. Generation of harmonics of tightly focused mid-IR pulses in ambient air.