Atmospheric Aerosol Clearing by Femtosecond Filaments

Atmospheric aerosols, such as water droplets in fog, interfere with laser propagation through scattering and absorption. Femtosecond optical filaments are shown to clear foggy regions, improving the transmission of subsequent pulses. However, the detailed fog-clearing mechanism had yet to be determined. Here, we directly measure and simulate the dynamics of water droplets with a radius of about 5 μ m, typical of fog, under the influence of optical and acoustic interactions that are characteristic of femtosecond filaments. We find that, for filaments generated by the collapse of collimated near-infrared femtosecond pulses, the main droplet-clearing mechanism is optical shattering by laser light. For such filaments, the single-cycle acoustic wave launched by filament-energy deposition in air leaves droplets intact and drives negligible transverse displacement, and therefore, negligible fog clearing. Only for tightly focused nonfilamentary pulses, where local energy deposition greatly exceeds that of a filament, do acoustic waves significantly displace aerosols.

[1]  J. Rocca,et al.  Wake dynamics of air filaments generated by high-energy picosecond laser pulses at 1 kHz repetition rate. , 2021, Optics letters.

[2]  I. Jovanovic,et al.  Millisecond-long suppression of spectroscopic optical signals using laser filamentation. , 2021, Optics letters.

[3]  J. Moloney,et al.  Tunable Near‐ to Far‐Infrared Optical Breakdown in Nonlinear Interactions of Ultrashort Laser Pulses with Water Microdroplets in Ambient Air , 2020 .

[4]  J. Wolf,et al.  Dynamics of the femtosecond laser-triggered spark gap. , 2020, Optics express.

[5]  J. Wolf,et al.  Molecular quantum wakes for clearing fog. , 2020, Optics Express.

[6]  H. Milchberg,et al.  Self-Guiding of Long-Wave Infrared Laser Pulses Mediated by Avalanche Ionization. , 2020, Physical review letters.

[7]  J. Moloney,et al.  Plasma-free water droplet shattering by long-wave infrared ultrashort pulses for efficient fog clearing , 2020 .

[8]  H. Milchberg,et al.  Absolute Measurement of Laser Ionization Yield in Atmospheric Pressure Range Gases over 14 Decades. , 2019, Physical review letters.

[9]  nasa,et al.  Progress of NASA research on warm fog properties and modification concepts Symposium proceedings , 2019 .

[10]  Hongchao Zhang,et al.  Optical breakdown during femtosecond laser propagation in water cloud. , 2019, Optics express.

[11]  C. Joshi,et al.  Megafilament in air formed by self-guided terawatt long-wavelength infrared laser , 2018, Nature Photonics.

[12]  J. Wolf,et al.  Free space laser telecommunication through fog , 2018, Optica.

[13]  M. Schultze,et al.  High repetition rate ultrashort laser cuts a path through fog , 2016, 1612.08276.

[14]  C. Ohl,et al.  Fragmentation of acoustically levitating droplets by laser-induced cavitation bubbles , 2016, Journal of Fluid Mechanics.

[15]  S. Zahedpour,et al.  Energy deposition of single femtosecond filaments in the atmosphere. , 2016, Optics letters.

[16]  S. Zahedpour,et al.  Spatiotemporal Optical Vortices , 2016, 1604.01751.

[17]  M. Richardson,et al.  Interaction of a single laser filament with a single water droplet , 2015 .

[18]  S. Zahedpour,et al.  Sensitivity of propagation and energy deposition in femtosecond filamentation to the nonlinear refractive index , 2014, 1411.4914.

[19]  S. Zahedpour,et al.  Quantum control of molecular gas hydrodynamics , 2014, 2014 Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO) - Laser Science to Photonic Applications.

[20]  S. Zahedpour,et al.  Direct imaging of the acoustic waves generated by femtosecond filaments in air. , 2014, Optics letters.

[21]  H. Milchberg,et al.  Demonstration of long-lived high power optical waveguides in air , 2013, 2014 Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics (CLEO) - Laser Science to Photonic Applications.

[22]  Karsten Diener,et al.  Kilometer range filamentation. , 2013, Optics express.

[23]  N. Jhajj,et al.  The effect of long timescale gas dynamics on femtosecond filamentation , 2013, CLEO: 2013.

[24]  S. Chin,et al.  Intensity clamping during laser filamentation by TW level femtosecond laser in air and argon , 2012 .

[25]  J. Wolf,et al.  Laser-induced water condensation in air , 2010, 2011 Conference on Lasers and Electro-Optics Europe and 12th European Quantum Electronics Conference (CLEO EUROPE/EQEC).

[26]  E. Toro High–Order and TVD Methods for Scalar Equations , 2009 .

[27]  George Rodriguez,et al.  Terahertz emission from ultrafast ionizing air in symmetry-broken laser fields. , 2007, Optics express.

[28]  A. Couairon,et al.  Femtosecond filamentation in transparent media , 2007 .

[29]  J. Wolf,et al.  Ultrashort filaments of light in weakly ionized, optically transparent media , 2006, physics/0612063.

[30]  Bahman Hafizi,et al.  Optimum Wavelength and Power for Efficient Laser Propagation in Various Atmospheric Environments , 2005 .

[31]  A. Becker,et al.  Experiment and simulations on the energy reservoir effect in femtosecond light filaments. , 2005, Optics letters.

[32]  A. Becker,et al.  Background reservoir: its crucial role for long-distance propagation of femtosecond laser pulses in air , 2005 .

[33]  D. Gordon,et al.  Direct characterization of self-guided femtosecond laser filaments in air. , 2005, Applied optics.

[34]  J V Moloney,et al.  Nonlinear optical pulse propagation simulation: from Maxwell's to unidirectional equations. , 2004, Physical review. E, Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics.

[35]  U. Peschel,et al.  Interaction of femtosecond light filaments with obscurants in aerosols. , 2004, Physical review letters.

[36]  Jin Yu,et al.  Kilometer-range nonlinear propagation of femtosecond laser pulses. , 2004, Physical review. E, Statistical, nonlinear, and soft matter physics.

[37]  Miroslav Kolesik,et al.  Self-healing femtosecond light filaments. , 2004, Optics letters.

[38]  E. Salmon,et al.  White-Light Filaments for Atmospheric Analysis , 2003, Science.

[39]  R Sauerbrey,et al.  Triggering and guiding megavolt discharges by use of laser-induced ionized filaments. , 2002, Optics letters.

[40]  A. Vogel,et al.  Laser-induced plasma formation in water at nanosecond to femtosecond time scales: Calculation of thresholds, absorption coefficients, and energy density , 1999 .

[41]  E. Toro Riemann Solvers and Numerical Methods for Fluid Dynamics , 1997 .

[42]  P. Ciddor Refractive index of air: new equations for the visible and near infrared. , 1996, Applied optics.

[43]  George S. K. Wong,et al.  Variation of specific heats and of specific heat ratio in air with humidity , 1984 .

[44]  Frank E. Jones,et al.  The Air Density Equation and the Transfer of the Mass Unit. , 1977, Journal of research of the National Bureau of Standards.

[45]  B. Kunkel Fog Drop-Size Distributions Measured with a Laser Hologram Camera , 1971 .