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Self-focusing
Self-focusing is a non-linear optical process induced by the change in refractive index of materials exposed to intense electromagnetic radiation. A medium whose refractive index increases with the electric field intensity acts as a focusing lens for an electromagnetic wave characterized by an initial transverse intensity gradient, as in a laser beam. The peak intensity of the self-focused region keeps increasing as the wave travels through the medium, until defocusing effects or medium damage interrupt this process. Self-focusing of light was discovered by Gurgen Askaryan. Self-focusing is often observed when radiation generated by femtosecond lasers propagates through many solids, liquids and gases. Depending on the type of material and on the intensity of the radiation, several mechanisms produce variations in the refractive index which result in self-focusing: the main cases are Kerr-induced self-focusing and plasma self-focusing. Kerr-induced self-focusing Kerr-induced se ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Gurgen Askaryan
Gurgen Ashotovich Askaryan ( hy, Գուրգեն Ասկարյան; russian: Гурген Аскарьян or Гурген Аскарян) (14 December 1928 – 2 March 1997) was a prominent Soviet - Armenian physicist, famous for his discovery of the self-focusing of light, pioneering studies of light-matter interactions, and the discovery and investigation of the interaction of high-energy particles with condensed matter. (See Askaryan effect) Biography Gurgen Askaryan was born in 1928 in Moscow, Russia to Armenian parents. Both parents were doctors: father Ashot Askaryan, was a general practitioner, and his mother Astgik Askaryan was a dentist. At the age of 18 Gurgen entered the Department of Physics at the Moscow State University, where he started his first research project specializing in the physics of atomic nuclei. Graduated in 1952 and was accepted to the graduate school at the Institute of Chemical Physics (ICP) in Moscow. In 1953, he was transferred to the Lebedev Instit ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Filament Propagation
In nonlinear optics, filament propagation is propagation of a beam of light through a medium without diffraction. This is possible because the Kerr effect causes an index of refraction change in the medium, resulting in self-focusing of the beam. Filamentary damage tracks in glass caused by laser pulses were first observed by Michael Hercher in 1964. Filament propagation of laser pulses in the atmosphere was observed in 1994 by Gérard Mourou and his team at University of Michigan. The balance between the self-focusing refraction and self-attenuating diffraction by ionization and rarefaction of a laser beam of terawatt intensities, created by chirped pulse amplification, in the atmosphere creates "filaments" which act as waveguides for the beam thus preventing divergence. Competing theories, that the observed filament was actually an illusion created by an axiconic (bessel) or moving focus instead of a "waveguided" concentration of the optical energy, were put to rest by worker ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Optical Kerr Effect
The Kerr effect, also called the quadratic electro-optic (QEO) effect, is a change in the refractive index of a material in response to an applied electric field. The Kerr effect is distinct from the Pockels effect in that the induced index change is directly proportional to the ''square'' of the electric field instead of varying linearly with it. All materials show a Kerr effect, but certain liquids display it more strongly than others. The Kerr effect was discovered in 1875 by Scottish physicist John Kerr. Two special cases of the Kerr effect are normally considered, these being the Kerr electro-optic effect, or DC Kerr effect, and the optical Kerr effect, or AC Kerr effect. Kerr electro-optic effect The Kerr electro-optic effect, or DC Kerr effect, is the special case in which a slowly varying external electric field is applied by, for instance, a voltage on electrodes across the sample material. Under this influence, the sample becomes birefringent, with different indices ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nonlinear Optics
Nonlinear optics (NLO) is the branch of optics that describes the behaviour of light in ''nonlinear media'', that is, media in which the polarization density P responds non-linearly to the electric field E of the light. The non-linearity is typically observed only at very high light intensities (when the electric field of the light is >108 V/m and thus comparable to the atomic electric field of ~1011 V/m) such as those provided by lasers. Above the Schwinger limit, the vacuum itself is expected to become nonlinear. In nonlinear optics, the superposition principle no longer holds. History The first nonlinear optical effect to be predicted was two-photon absorption, by Maria Goeppert Mayer for her PhD in 1931, but it remained an unexplored theoretical curiosity until 1961 and the almost simultaneous observation of two-photon absorption at Bell Labs and the discovery of second-harmonic generation by Peter Franken ''et al.'' at University of Michigan, both shortly after the con ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plasma Physics
Plasma ()πλάσμα , Henry George Liddell, Robert Scott, ''A Greek English Lexicon'', on Perseus is one of the four fundamental states of matter. It contains a significant portion of charged particles – ions and/or s. The presence of these charged particles is what primarily sets plasma apart from the other fundamental states of matter. It is the most abundant form of [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chirped Pulse Amplification
Chirped pulse amplification (CPA) is a technique for amplifying an ultrashort laser pulse up to the petawatt level, with the laser pulse being stretched out temporally and spectrally, then amplified, and then compressed again. The stretching and compression uses devices that ensure that the different color components of the pulse travel different distances. CPA for lasers was introduced by Donna Strickland and Gérard Mourou at the University of Rochester in the mid-1980s, work for which they received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2018. CPA is the current state-of-the-art technique used by most of the highest-power lasers in the world. Background Before the introduction of CPA in the mid-1980s, the peak power of laser pulses was limited because a laser pulse at intensities of gigawatts per square centimeter causes serious damage to the gain medium through nonlinear processes such as self-focusing. For example, some of the most powerful compressed CPA laser beams, even ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kerr-lens Modelocking
Kerr-lens mode-locking (KLM) is a method of mode-locking lasers via the nonlinear optical Kerr effect. This method allows the generation of pulses of light with a duration as short as a few femtoseconds. The optical Kerr effect is a process which results from the nonlinear response of an optical medium to the electric field of an electromagnetic wave. The refractive index of the medium is dependent on the field strength. Because of the non-uniform power density distribution in a Gaussian beam (as found in laser resonators) the refractive index changes across the beam profile; the refractive index experienced by the beam is greater in the center of the beam than at the edge. Thus a rod of an active Kerr medium functions as a lens for high intensity light. This is called self-focusing and in extreme cases leads to material destruction. In the laser cavity short bursts of light will then be focused differently from continuous waves. To favor the pulsed mode over continuous-wave, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Refractive Index
In optics, the refractive index (or refraction index) of an optical medium is a dimensionless number that gives the indication of the light bending ability of that medium. The refractive index determines how much the path of light is bent, or refracted, when entering a material. This is described by Snell's law of refraction, , where ''θ''1 and ''θ''2 are the angle of incidence and angle of refraction, respectively, of a ray crossing the interface between two media with refractive indices ''n''1 and ''n''2. The refractive indices also determine the amount of light that is reflected when reaching the interface, as well as the critical angle for total internal reflection, their intensity (Fresnel's equations) and Brewster's angle. The refractive index can be seen as the factor by which the speed and the wavelength of the radiation are reduced with respect to their vacuum values: the speed of light in a medium is , and similarly the wavelength in that medium is , where ''� ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ruby Laser
A ruby laser is a solid-state laser that uses a synthetic ruby crystal as its gain medium. The first working laser was a ruby laser made by Theodore H. "Ted" Maiman at Hughes Research Laboratories on May 16, 1960. Ruby lasers produce pulses of coherent visible light at a wavelength of 694.3 nm, which is a deep red color. Typical ruby laser pulse lengths are on the order of a millisecond. Design A ruby laser most often consists of a ruby rod that must be pumped with very high energy, usually from a flashtube, to achieve a population inversion. The rod is often placed between two mirrors, forming an optical cavity, which oscillate the light produced by the ruby's fluorescence, causing stimulated emission. Ruby is one of the few solid state lasers that produce light in the visible range of the spectrum, lasing at 694.3 nanometers, in a deep red color, with a very narrow linewidth of 0.53 nm.''Principles of Lasers'' By Orazio Svelto – Plenum Press 1976 Page 367–37 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plasma Frequency
Plasma oscillations, also known as Langmuir waves (after Irving Langmuir), are rapid oscillations of the electron density in conducting media such as plasmas or metals in the ultraviolet region. The oscillations can be described as an instability in the dielectric function of a free electron gas. The frequency only depends weakly on the wavelength of the oscillation. The quasiparticle resulting from the quantization of these oscillations is the plasmon. Langmuir waves were discovered by American physicists Irving Langmuir and Lewi Tonks in the 1920s. They are parallel in form to Jeans instability waves, which are caused by gravitational instabilities in a static medium. Mechanism Consider an electrically neutral plasma in equilibrium, consisting of a gas of positively charged ions and negatively charged electrons. If one displaces by a tiny amount an electron or a group of electrons with respect to the ions, the Coulomb force pulls the electrons back, acting as a restoring fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
List Of Plasma (physics) Articles
This is a list of plasma physics topics. A * Ablation * Abradable coating * Abraham–Lorentz force * Absorption band * Accretion disk * Active galactic nucleus * Adiabatic invariant * ADITYA (tokamak) * Aeronomy * Afterglow plasma * Airglow * Air plasma, Corona treatment, Atmospheric-pressure plasma treatment * Ayaks, Novel "Magneto-plasmo-chemical engine" * Alcator C-Mod * Alfvén wave * Ambipolar diffusion * Aneutronic fusion * Anisothermal plasma * Anisotropy * Antiproton Decelerator * Appleton-Hartree equation * Arcing horns * Arc lamp * Arc suppression * ASDEX Upgrade, Axially Symmetric Divertor EXperiment * Astron (fusion reactor) * Astronomy * Astrophysical plasma * Astrophysical X-ray source * Atmospheric dynamo * Atmospheric escape * Atmospheric pressure discharge * Atmospheric-pressure plasma * Atom * Atomic emission spectroscopy * Atomic physics * Atomic-terrace low-angle shadowing * Auger electron spectroscopy * Aurora (astronomy) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
