Self-Guided Propagation of Ultrashort Laser Pulses in the Anomalous Dispersion Region of Transparent Solids: A New Regime of Filamentation

Abstract

We report measurements concerning the propagation of femtosecond laser pulses in fused silica with a wavelength at 1.9 μm falling in the negative group velocity dispersion region. Under sub-GW excitation power, stable filaments are observed over several cm showing the emergence of nonspreading pulses both in space and time. At higher excitation powers, one observes first multiple pulse splitting followed by the emergence of the quasispatiotemporal solitary filament. These results are well reproduced by numerical simulations.