Triggering and guiding of high voltage discharge by using femtosecond laser filaments with different parameters

This paper demonstrates the triggering and guiding of the stationary high voltage (HV) discharges at 5--40 kV by using plasma filaments generated by femtosecond laser pulses in air. A significant reduction of the breakdown voltage threshold due to the pre-ionization of the air gap by laser filamentation is observed. The discharge experiments are performed by using laser pulses with different energy from 15--60 mJ. The electron density of filaments is detected by sonography method. The influence of the electron density of laser filaments on the triggering and guiding HV discharge is experimentally investigated. The results have shown that the behaviour of plasma filaments can strongly affect the efficiency of triggering and guiding HV discharge.     

Laser propulsion with a high specific impulse using a thin film propellant

A new laser propulsion scheme with a high specific impulse is proposed in this paper.An extremely thin polyimide film is used as the propellant to eliminate thermal diffusion and sputter from the target material.It is found that a high specific impulse of 1520 s can be achieved at 10 11-W/cm 2 laser intensity because of economic use of the propellant.The influences of the laser intensity and the ablation area on the specific impulse are also studied in the experiment.