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Enhanced spatiotemporal laser-beam smoothing in gas-jet plasmas
1Laboratoire d'Optique Appliquée, Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Techniques Avancées, Centre de la Recherche Scientifique UMR 7639, 91761 Palaiseau, France.
Abstract:
Spatiotemporal smoothing of large-scale laser intensity fluctuations is observed for a laser beam focused into underdense helium plasmas. This smoothing is found to be severely enhanced when focusing the laser beam into a helium gas jet. In contrast to other experiments with preformed plasmas, the average and the peak laser intensities are well below the threshold for ponderomotive self-focusing. The coherence characteristics of the transmitted light are measured for various electron densities, and the smoothing effect is explained by multiple scattering of laser light on self-induced density perturbations.