In this paper we report a recent study on the beam self-cleaning behavior occurred during the ultrashort laser pulse filamentation process. The propagation of a Gaussian beam with distorted beam profile is numerically simulated based on the nonlinear wave equation. Our results demonstrate that when the power is not too high so that multiple filaments are not yet induced, the intensity perturbation con-tained in the initial beam profile could be treated as high order spatial modes su-perpositioning on a fundamental mode. Then the self-focusing of the laser beam acts as a spatial filter. It focuses the fundamental mode toward the propagation axis, and produces a fundamental mode profile at the self-focus. While the strong diffraction of higher order modes could not be counteracted by the self-focusing. Therefore their propagation is mainly governed by the divergence without de-stroying the high profile quality at the self-focal region. These lead to the observa-tion of beam profile self-cleaning behavior.
The filamentation characteristics of femtosecond laser pulses in ZK7 glass are in- vestigated experimentally as a function of initial negative chirps. It is found that the filament threshold power grows rapidly and the filament length extends over a long distance with increasing initial temporal chirps. The measurement of supercon- tinuum reveals that the plasma generation process within filamentation becomes weaker as the initial negative chirp increases, leading to a self-guiding long light channel dominated by Kerr nonlinearity. The interference of transverse rings in multifilamentation of the chirped laser pulses is observed as well. Analyses and discussions give an interpretation of this chirp-induced ionization-free filamenta- tion. These results indicate that initial chirps will play a crucial role in the filament formation of ultrashort laser pulses in transparent media.
