Influence of the laser beam size on the length of a filament formed by high-power femtosecond laser radiation in air

The single-filamentation regime of GW femtosecond laser beams of millimetre diameter, propagating in atmospheric air under collimated and tight focusing, has been theoretically and experimentally (at wavelengths of 800 and 400 nm) investigated. The influence of the initial size of the light beam on the spatial characteristics of the filamentation region is systematically analysed. The filamentation length for collimated beams with the same initial power is found to nonmonotonically depend on the initial beam radius. In this case, the filament start point is displaced, and the longitudinal continuity of the related plasma channel is lost. For tightly focused beams, the observed filament length barely depends of the initial beam radius, provided that the peak intensity remains constant.