%0 Journal Article %T A simple method for determination of nonlinear propagation regimes in gases %+ Laboratoire d'optique appliquée (LOA) %+ Centre de Physique Théorique [Palaiseau] (CPHT) %A Akturk, Selcuk %A d'Amico, Ciro %A Franco, Michel, A. %A Couairon, Arnaud %A Mysyrowicz, André %< avec comité de lecture %@ 1094-4087 %J Optics Express %I Optical Society of America - OSA Publishing %V 15 %N 23 %P 15260 %8 2007-11-02 %D 2007 %R 10.1364/OE.15.015260 %K Nonlinear Optics %Z OCIS Codes: 190.3270;320.7110 %Z Physics [physics]/Physics [physics]/Optics [physics.optics]Journal articles %X A simple method to evaluate the nonlinear propagation regimes in gases is demonstrated. The principle is to focus ultrashort laser pulses into a gas cell, vary the input pulse power and measure the transmission through a pinhole placed at the output. The resulting transmission curve yields an intuitive signature of various nonlinear propagation regimes. Going from low powers to higher, one first observes a brief decrease in the transmission due to nonlinear moving focus. Then, a sharp rise occurs, indicating the starting of the filamentation process. When the power increases further, the transmission saturates and eventually decreases due to the beginning of multi-filamentation. As a result, this method gives a quick and sensitive measurement of pulse energies required to have single and multiple filaments. %G English %L hal-00454995 %U https://polytechnique.hal.science/hal-00454995 %~ X %~ ENSTA %~ CNRS %~ X-CPHT %~ X-LOA %~ X-DEP %~ X-DEP-PHYS %~ PARISTECH %~ ENSTA_LOA