Observation of Conical Emission From a Single Self-Trapped Beam

Published

June 1, 1999

Author(s)

B D. Paul, Marla L. Dowell, Alan Gallagher, J W. Cooper

Abstract

We report observations of conical emission from a pulsed laser beam with incident laser power, detuning, and beam diameter matched to a range of single, steady-state filaments. The beam thus propagates with nearly constant diameter through 5 cm of strontium (Sr) vapor. Emission angles (θ) are imaged as the height on the input slit of a 1.5 m spectrometer; a charge-coupled device camera in the spectrometer exit plane measures energy as a function of theata} and frequency. Data are reported versus laser-pulse energy, diameter and detuning and the collisional dephasing rate. Sepctrally broad red-detuned cones are observed, but only when the laser beam is predominately self-trapped. As previously observed in experiments where the beam breaks up into multiple filaments, forward emission at the blue-detuned Ragi sideband is much weaker than at the red(cone) sideband. The cone angle is largely independent of the phase velocity of the self-trapped laser beam, which varies from the vapor to the vacuum speed. The efficiency of the cone emission shows incomplete saturation, as well as strong dependence on self-trapped filament parameters.

Citation

Physical Review A (Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics)

Volume

59

Issue

No. 6

Pub Type

Journals

Keywords

conical emission, self-focusing

Citation

Paul, B. , Dowell, M. , Gallagher, A. and Cooper, J. (1999), Observation of Conical Emission From a Single Self-Trapped Beam, Physical Review A (Atomic, Molecular and Optical Physics) (Accessed October 25, 2025)