Intensity Clamping during Laser Filamentation by TW Level
Femtosecond Laser in Air and Argon¹

S. Xu^a, J. Bernhardt^b, M. Sharifi^b, W. Liu^a, *, and S. L. Chin^b, * *

^a Institute of Modern Optics, Nankai University, Tianjin 300071, China

^b Centre d’optique, Photonique et Laser (COPL) and Département de Physique, de Genie Physique et d’Optique,
Université Laval, Québec, QC, G1V 0A6, Canada

*e-mail: liuweiwei@nankai.edu.cn

**e-mail: slchin@phy.ulaval.ca

Received July 30, 2011; in final form, August 5, 2011; published online November 28, 2011

Abstract—A systematic research on intensity clamping phenomenon was conducted both in air and argon by
using a TW level femtosecond laser. Though the laser peak power was increased from 0.1 up to 1.5 TW in the
experiment, highly stabilized peak intensity inside the filament was observed in both gases. The peak intensities
inside filaments were experimentally determined to be about 6.4 10¹³ W/cm² (f = 20 cm) in air and 1.2, 1.3,
and 1.7 10¹⁴ W/cm² when different focal lenses (f = 100, 60, and 20 cm) were used in argon, respectively.

DOI: 10.1134/S1054660X12010264

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