New Methodological Aspects of Physics and Applications of Atmospheric Nonlinear Optics

A special issue of Atmosphere (ISSN 2073-4433). This special issue belongs to the section "Atmospheric Techniques, Instruments, and Modeling".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (21 March 2025) | Viewed by 2783

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Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, Shamoon College of Engineering, Ashdod 77245, Israel
Interests: nonlinear optics; nonlinear materials; lasers; optical fibers; biomedical optics; atmospheric optics; quantum optics
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

High-power laser pulses undergo nonlinear propagation in transparent media. This action includes exciting and challenging physics with many applications. The areas of study include intense-field physics, extreme nonlinear optics, nonlinear electromagnetic pulse propagation, quantum optics, and some unknown new physical phenomena. Phenomena like self-focusing, self-guiding, self-reflection, four-wave mixing, self-phase modulation, self-steepening, and pulse splitting have been extensively studied from theoretical and experimental points of view. Still, they have often been restricted to condensed matter, especially glass.

In the early 2000s, when ultrashort laser pulses were produced with intensities as high as 1020 W/cm2, highly nonlinear propagation was observed in media such as the atmosphere. Atmospheric propagation is rich and complex. It has long been believed that intense ultra-short laser pulses are not suited for long-range propagation in air. However, experiments using intense infrared (IR) femtosecond pulses show the opposite trend. They open avenues for many atmospheric applications in fields as diverse as lightning control and remote air pollution sensing.

Furthermore, in the early 2000s, a pioneering experiment demonstrated the creation of atmospheric plasma channels using white light. The measurements showed atmospheric propagation at altitudes as high as 12 km. This experiment opened a new field of Lidar investigations. The white light femtosecond Lidar technique is based on the nonlinear propagation of ultra-short and ultra-intense laser pulses in the atmosphere. The dynamical balance between Kerr self-focusing and plasma defocusing produces filaments in the optical media. The long-range propagation of the pulses beyond their first self-focus depends on using subpicosecond laser pulses, which are short enough to avoid the occurrence of avalanche ionization. Filamentation garnered great interest and became a field of intense research activity. Femtosecond filamentation was observed for various laser wavelengths from the ultraviolet to the infrared domain, and pulse durations were observed from several tenths of femtoseconds to several picoseconds.

This Special Issue invites contributions describing the new methodological aspects of physics and the applications of atmospheric nonlinear optics. We encourage authors to share their opinions, knowledge, and achievements. In addition, it is essential to present the impact of the latest disclosures on applications in the field on human activity and include the examples of new measurement methods. All this is to improve our scientific understanding of the subject.

Original research, systematic review, meta-analysis, and model studies related to the theme are welcome.

We very much look forward to your submissions.

Dr. Irit Juwiler
Guest Editor

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Keywords

  • laser beam transmission
  • nonlinear propagation
  • ultrafast non-linear optics
  • ultrafast lasers
  • filamentation
  • ultrashort laser pulses
  • optical Kerr effect
  • self-focusing
  • self-action effects
  • remote sensing
  • Lidar
  • aerosol and cloud effects
  • atmospheric scattering
  • backscattering
  • plasmas
  • lightning control
  • turbulence

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

14 pages, 15285 KiB  
Article
Numerical Simulation of the Effects of Surface Roughness on Light Scattering by Hexagonal Ice Plates
by Harry Ballington and Evelyn Hesse
Atmosphere 2024, 15(9), 1051; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos15091051 - 30 Aug 2024
Viewed by 797
Abstract
Cirrus clouds have an extensive global coverage and their high altitude means they play a critical role in the atmospheric radiation balance. Hexagonal ice plates and columns are two of the most abundant species present in cirrus and yet there remains a poor [...] Read more.
Cirrus clouds have an extensive global coverage and their high altitude means they play a critical role in the atmospheric radiation balance. Hexagonal ice plates and columns are two of the most abundant species present in cirrus and yet there remains a poor understanding of how surface roughness affects the scattering of light from these particles. To advance current understanding, the scattering properties of hexagonal ice plates with varying surface roughness properties are simulated using the discrete dipole approximation and the parent beam tracer physical–optics method. The ice plates are chosen to have a volume-equivalent size parameter of 2πr/λ=60, where r is the radius of the volume-equivalent sphere, and a refractive index n=1.31+0i at a wavelength λ=0.532 µm. The surface roughness is varied in terms of a characteristic length scale and an amplitude. The particles are rotated into 96 orientations to obtain the quasi-orientation averaged scattering Mueller matrix and integrated single-scattering parameters. The study finds that the scattering is largely invariant with respect to the roughness length scale, meaning it can be characterised solely by the roughness amplitude. Increasing the amplitude is found to lead to a decrease in the asymmetry parameter. It is also shown that roughness with an amplitude much smaller than the wavelength has almost no effect on the scattering when compared with a pristine smooth plate. The parent beam tracer method shows good agreement with the discrete dipole approximation when the characteristic length scale of the roughness is several times larger than the wavelength, with a computation time reduced by a factor of approximately 500. Full article
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12 pages, 4264 KiB  
Article
Postfilament-Induced Two-Photon Fluorescence of Dyed Liquid Aerosol Enhanced by Structured Femtosecond Laser Pulse
by Dmitry V. Apeksimov, Pavel A. Babushkin, Yury E. Geints, Andrey M. Kabanov, Elena E. Khoroshaeva, Victor K. Oshlakov, Alexey V. Petrov and Alexander A. Zemlyanov
Atmosphere 2024, 15(7), 813; https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos15070813 - 6 Jul 2024
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1400
Abstract
Laser-induced fluorescence spectroscopy (LIFS) is actively used for remote sensing of atmospheric aerosols and is currently one of the most sensitive and selective techniques for determining small concentrations of substances inside particles. The use of high-power femtosecond laser sources for LIFS-based remote sensing [...] Read more.
Laser-induced fluorescence spectroscopy (LIFS) is actively used for remote sensing of atmospheric aerosols and is currently one of the most sensitive and selective techniques for determining small concentrations of substances inside particles. The use of high-power femtosecond laser sources for LIFS-based remote sensing of aerosols contributes to the development of new-generation fluorescence atmospheric lidars since it makes it possible to overcome the energy threshold for the nonlinear-optical effects of multiphoton absorption in particles and receive the emission signal at long distances in the atmosphere. Our study is aimed at the development and experimental demonstration of the technique of nonlinear laser-induced fluorescence spectroscopy (NLIFS) based on the remote excitation of aerosol fluorescent emission stimulated by a spatially structured high-power femtosecond laser pulse. Importantly, for the first time to our knowledge, we demonstrate the advances in using stochastically structured plasma-free intense light channels (postfilaments) specially formed by the propagation of femtosecond laser radiation through a turbulent air layer to improve NLIFS efficiency. A multiple increase in the received signal of two-photon-excited fluorescence of polydisperse-dyed aqueous aerosols by the structured postfilaments is reported. Full article
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