@inproceedings{14035f8f51a94d99b1d2d916c0fdfbbd,
title = "Long range robust multi-terawatt MWIR and LWIR atmospheric light bullets",
abstract = "There is a strong push worldwide to develop multi-Joule femtosecond duration laser pulses at wavelengths around 3.5-4 and 9-11μm within important atmospheric transmission windows. We have shown that pulses with a 4 μm central wavelength are capable of delivering multi-TW powers at km range. This is in stark contrast to pulses at near-IR wavelengths which break up into hundreds of filaments with each carrying around 5 GW of power per filament over meter distances. We will show that nonlinear envelope propagators fail to capture the true physics. Instead a new optical carrier shock singularity emerges that can act to limit peak intensities below the ionization threshold leading to low loss long range propagation. At LWIR wavelengths many-body correlations of weakly-ionized electrons further suppress the Kerr focusing nonlinearity around 10μm and enable whole beam self-trapping without filaments.",
keywords = "carrier shock, critical self-focusing, filament, long range propagation, whole beam self-trapping",
author = "Moloney, {Jerome V.} and Kolja Schuh and Paris Panagiotopoulos and M. Kolesik and Koch, {S. W.}",
note = "Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} COPYRIGHT SPIE.; Ultrafast Bandgap Photonics II 2017 ; Conference date: 10-04-2017 Through 12-04-2017",
year = "2017",
doi = "10.1117/12.2262142",
language = "English (US)",
series = "Proceedings of SPIE - The International Society for Optical Engineering",
publisher = "SPIE",
editor = "Rafailov, {Michael K.}",
booktitle = "Ultrafast Bandgap Photonics II",
}