Diffraction based single pulse measurement of air ionization dynamics induced by femtosecond laser

A single pulse diffraction method to probe the plasma column evolution of the air ionization induced by the femtosecond laser pulse has been proposed. By utilizing a linearly chirped pulse as the probe light, the spatiotemporal evolution spectrum of the plasma column can be acquired in a single measurement. A method based on the Fresnel diffraction integral is proposed to extract the evolution of the phase shift after the probe light is crossing through the plasma column. Results show that the plasma expands rapidly within 7 ps due to the ionization, and then reaches a steady state with a diameter of about 80 μm with the pump pulse energy of 1 mJ. Furtherly, the temporal profile of the free electron density and the refractive index in the plasma region were determined using the corresponding physical models. The single-shot method can be expected to broaden the way for detecting the dynamics of the femtosecond laser-induced plasma.