title: Polarization rotation due to femtosecond filamentation in an atomic gas.
abstract: The linear-to-elliptical transformation of a 400 nm femtosecond-probe pulse in the birefringent filament in argon of an 800 nm linearly polarized femtosecond-pump pulse is studied numerically and experimentally. The rotation of the probe elliptical polarization is the largest in the high-intensity filament core. With propagation, the rotated radiation diffracts outward by the pump-produced plasma. The transmission of the analyzer crossing the probe's polarization is maximum at the pump-probe angle of 45 degrees and gives equal values for each pair of angles symmetrically situated at both sides of the maximum.
authors.affiliation: International Laser Center & Faculty of Physics, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Moscow, Russia. kosareva@physics.msu.ru
authors.forename: Olga
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Kosareva
authors.forename: Nikolay
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Panov
authors.forename: Vladimir
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Makarov
authors.forename: Igor
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Perezhogin
authors.forename: Claude
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Marceau
authors.forename: Yanping
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Chen
authors.forename: Shuai
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Yuan
authors.forename: Tiejun
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.forename: Heping
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Zeng
authors.forename: Andrey
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Savel'ev
authors.forename: See Leang
authors.initials: SL
authors.lastname: Chin