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Updated: Jun 20, 2026

Femtosecond Laser Filaments for Use in Sub-Diffraction-Limited Imaging and Remote Sensing
Published on: April 25, 2019
Conical emission due to four-wave mixing enhanced by the ac Stark effect in self-trapped filaments of light
Abstract:
Experimental evidence is presented that shows that the conical emission often found surrounding a near-resonant laser beam after it passes through an atomic vapor is due to nondegenerate four-wave mixing enhanced by the ac Stark effect. We demonstrate self-trapping of a pulsed dye-laser beam in sodium vapor for wavelengths 0.04 to 10 A shorter than that of the D(2) resonance and show that the four-wave mixing process leading to conical emission occurs within these self-trapped filaments.
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