Presentation by Dr. Jeremy Gulley of Kennesaw State University at the 2014 AFOSR YIP Meeting:

Ultrafast pulse filamentation and laser-induced ionization in bulk solids are interrelated research areas with broad and promising applications. The applications for defense and security in particular have necessitated a detailed understanding of pulse propagation coupled with ultrafast laser-material interactions. Current ultrashort pulse propagation models describe the evolution of fields with broad spectra while models of laser-induced ionization and laser-plasma interactions typically assume monochromatic laser fields.  In my YIP research I address the inherent contradiction of combining multi-chromatic propagation models with monochromatic laser-material descriptions.  The presented comparison of our recent simulation data with experiment show how this contradiction leads to order-of-magnitude errors in calculating the ionization yield.  These same simulation results suggest that multi-chromatic effects will alter the shape and severity of laser-induced modifications to the bulk of dielectric solids.