FAIR USE NOTICE

FAIR USE NOTICE: The information and materials used on this blog, i.e. articles, videos,etc., may contain copyrighted (© ) material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. Such material is made available to advance understanding of ecological, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues, spiritual, religious, etc. It is believed that this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior general interest in receiving similar information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: /http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode

Friday, November 25, 2011

Lightning in the lab: Femtosecond laser generating plasma in air




Uploaded by on Mar 29, 2009
A 100GW 35fs 1kHz laser is focussed down to a narrow waist, which creates an electric field large enough to ionise the air. You can see the resulting plasma glowing (the little white floating blob). The process is essentially the same as lightning, which of course is accompanied by "thunder": the 1kHz buzz you can hear is the thunder, repeated 1000 times per second (the laser pulses at 1kHz). The coloured pattern on the wall is the expanded beam, the moving colours generated by the nonlinear effects in the plasma.
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)