Natural population inversion in a gaseous molecular filament

Abstract

We propose a new mechanism/scheme to explain the ultrafast population inversion of molecular ions which takes place in a time scale comparable to the femtosecond laser pulse. The nonlinear pumping process including the pump photons and the self-generated harmonic photons of the pump laser would be responsible for building up population inversion to realize remote molecule lasers in femtosecond laser filaments in gases. It is shown that the remote laser emissions in molecular ions of gases may be a universal process in the femtosecond laser filament.