Investigating the interplay of the thermal lensing effect and the kerr self-focusing effect in decanol for the formation of a spatial soliton.

Filamentation in air extends the highly nonlinear interaction of intense femtosecond pulses, exploiting the competing processes of Kerr self-focusing with plasma defocusing. However, the weak nonlinearity of the atmosphere necessitates highly amplified pulses. We investigate an alternative phenomena which could allow for the formation of spatial solitons in liquids through a strong thermal lensing effect, enabling filamentation at orders of magnitude lower pulse energies.

The investigation follows a twofold approach. Firstly, we developed numerical simulations for the thermal lensing effect in certain liquids. Unlike previous empirical studies which have primarily employed highly toxic liquids as samples such toluene and carbon disulfide, this study focuses on alkanols as they provide a much safer alternative. Alkanols with their inherently strong and measurable thermal lensing effects coupled with relatively high nonlinearity lends itself as the promising candidate family of liquids for the study.

The fidelity of the model was validated through experimental results from existing literature. The model was used to simulate the interplay of the Kerr self-focusing effect and thermal defocusing effect in 1-decanol, chosen in part due to its high boiling point that ensures stable beam propagation and high non-linearity. The investigation successfully explored the intricate relationship between beam parameters and the thermal lensing phenomenon in 1-decanol. To the best of our knowledge, our work is the first to report on and analyse these properties for 1-decanol. The study is presently ongoing.