Demonstration of long-lived high-power optical waveguides in air

Abstract

We demonstrate that femtosecond filaments can set up an extended and robust thermal waveguide structure in air with a lifetime of several milliseconds, making possible the very-long-range guiding and distant projection of high-energy laser pulses and high-average power beams. As a proof of principle, we demonstrate guiding of 110-mJ, 7-ns, 532-nm pulses with 90% throughput over ~15 Rayleigh lengths in a 70-cm-long air waveguide generated by the long time-scale thermal relaxation of an array of femtosecond filaments. The guided pulse was limited only by our available laser energy. In general, these waveguides should be robust against the effects of thermal blooming of extremely high-average-power laser beams.