Spatio-temporal control of femtosecond laser filamentation and white-light generation

Several possibilities are investigated to control spatio-temporal characteristics of the femtosecond filamentation process and the resulting white-light generation. We controlled the development of self-focusing, and resulting locations of filaments producing white-light in water by changing the transverse spatial phase of an initial Gaussian beam with a computer generated holographic technique and a spatial light modulator. We studied intense femtosecond filamentation and propagation of femtosecond pulses with different transverse modes in water. The filament propagation length was found to increase with Bessel-Gaussian modes of the beams, when more lateral lobes were used, under the conditions of the same peak intensity, pulse duration, and size of the central peak of the incident beam. We also investigated variations of white-light generation when the delay between the two pulses was varied. With a decrease of the relative delay, an enhancement of white-light output was observed, which at near-zero delays was reverted to a suppression of white-light generation.