Evolution of a super-broadened spectrum in a filament generated by an ultrashort intense laser pulse in fused silica

We report experimental and theoretical investigations of the evolution of super-broadened spectrum generation by intense 50-fs pulses propagating in bulk fused silica. Based on good agreement between the experimental results and numerical simulations, a mechanism of supercontinuum generation (SCG) is proposed. At first, both self-phase modulation (SPM) and stimulated Raman scattering (SRS) contribute substantially but slowly to the broadening before filament formation takes place. After filamentation, a plasma grows rapidly and asymmetric spectral broadening results in a blue-shifted spectrum extending to about 400 nm. A time-resolved experiment of the SCG was also performed using a double-pump technique. The temporal behavior suggests that the vibrational mode excited by the stimulated Raman process by the first pulse contributes to the occurrence of self-focusing. PACS 42.65.Re; 42.25.Bs