Optical diagnostics of femtosecond laser plasmas

Optical diagnostics of evolution of plasmas produced by ultrashort laser pulses is carried out using a femtosecond probing beam. The time sequence of plasma shadowgrams and interferograms are obtained. The filamentation instability in high-density region induces the local density modification. Large-scale toroidal magnetic fields confine plasma expansion in the transverse direction, resulting in the formation of a plasma jet. The plasma expansion along the target normal direction is found to scale as t1/2.