title: Tightly focused femtosecond laser pulse in air: from filamentation to breakdown.
abstract: The propagation of tightly focused femtosecond laser pulse with numerical aperture of 0.12 in air is investigated experimentally. The formation and evolution of the filament bunch are recorded by time-resolved shadowgraph with laser energy from 2.4 mJ to 47 mJ. The distribution of electron density in breakdown area is retrieved using Nomarski interferometer. It is found that intensity clamping during filamentation effect still play a role even under strong external focusing. The electron density in some interaction zones is higher than 3 × 10(19) cm(-3), which indicates that each air molecule there is ionized.
authors.affiliation: Beijing National Laboratory for Condensed Matter Physics, Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China.
authors.forename: Xiao-Long
authors.initials: XL
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Xin
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Lu
authors.forename: Xun
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Ting-Ting
authors.initials: TT
authors.lastname: Xi
authors.forename: Feng
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.forename: Jing-Long
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Ma
authors.forename: Jie
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Zhang
mesh_terms: D000388:Air; D004867:Equipment Design; D019544:Equipment Failure Analysis; D007834:Lasers; D008027:Light; D012542:Scattering, Radiation