title: Superfilamentation in air.
abstract: The interaction between a large number of laser filaments brought together using weak external focusing leads to the emergence of few filamentary structures reminiscent of standard filaments, but carrying a higher intensity. The resulting plasma is measured to be 1 order of magnitude denser than for short-scale filaments. This new propagation regime is dubbed superfilamentation. Numerical simulations of a nonlinear envelope equation provide good agreement with experiments.
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire d'Optique Appliquée - ENSTA ParisTech, Ecole Polytechnique, CNRS-828 boulevard des Maréchaux, 91762 Palaiseau Cedex, France.
authors.forename: Guillaume
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Point
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire d'Optique Appliquée - ENSTA ParisTech, Ecole Polytechnique, CNRS-828 boulevard des Maréchaux, 91762 Palaiseau Cedex, France.
authors.forename: Yohann
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Brelet
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire d'Optique Appliquée - ENSTA ParisTech, Ecole Polytechnique, CNRS-828 boulevard des Maréchaux, 91762 Palaiseau Cedex, France.
authors.forename: Aurélien
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Houard
authors.affiliation: Centre de Physique Théorique - Ecole Polytechnique, CNRS-1 route de Saclay, 91128 Palaiseau Cedex, France.
authors.forename: Vytautas
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Jukna
authors.affiliation: Centre de Physique Théorique - Ecole Polytechnique, CNRS-1 route de Saclay, 91128 Palaiseau Cedex, France.
authors.forename: Carles
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Milián
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire d'Optique Appliquée - ENSTA ParisTech, Ecole Polytechnique, CNRS-828 boulevard des Maréchaux, 91762 Palaiseau Cedex, France.
authors.forename: Jérôme
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Carbonnel
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire d'Optique Appliquée - ENSTA ParisTech, Ecole Polytechnique, CNRS-828 boulevard des Maréchaux, 91762 Palaiseau Cedex, France.
authors.forename: Yi
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Liu
authors.affiliation: Centre de Physique Théorique - Ecole Polytechnique, CNRS-1 route de Saclay, 91128 Palaiseau Cedex, France.
authors.forename: Arnaud
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Couairon
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire d'Optique Appliquée - ENSTA ParisTech, Ecole Polytechnique, CNRS-828 boulevard des Maréchaux, 91762 Palaiseau Cedex, France.
authors.forename: André
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Mysyrowicz