Related Experiment Videos
Honeycomb pattern formation by laser-beam filamentation in atomic sodium vapor
Ryan S Bennink1, Vincent Wong, Alberto M Marino
1The Institute of Optics, University of Rochester, Rochester, New York 14627, USA.
Physical Review Letters
|March 23, 2002
Abstract:
We have observed transverse pattern formation leading to highly regular structures in both the near and far fields when a near-resonant laser beam propagates without feedback through an atomic sodium vapor. One example is a regular far-field honeycomb pattern, which results from the transformation of the laser beam within the vapor into a stable three-lobed structure with a uniform phase distribution and highly correlated power fluctuations. The predictions of a theoretical model of the filamentation process are in good agreement with these observations.