Optical beam dynamics in a gas repetitively heated by femtosecond filaments

Abstract

We investigate beam pointing dynamics in filamentation in gases driven by high repetition rate femtosecond laser pulses. Upon suddenly exposing a gas to a kilohertz train of filamenting pulses, the filament is steered from its original direction to a new stable direction whose equilibrium is determined by a balance among buoyant, viscous, and diffusive processes in the gas. Results are shown for Xe and air, but are broadly applicable to all configurations employing high repetition rate femtosecond laser propagation in gases.