The characteristics of plasmas play an important role in femtosecond laser filament-based applications. Spectroscopic analysis is used to experimentally investigate the plasma density and its temperature of the air filament under different pulse repetition rates. In our experiments, the measured average plasma density of the filament is 1.54×1017cm-3 and the temperature of the plasma is about 5100 K under 100 Hz pulse repetition rate. The plasma density decreases to 1.43×1017cm-3 and the temperature increases to 6230 K as the pulse repetition rate increases to 1000 Hz. The experimental observation agrees with the numerical simulation by solving the nonlinear Schrödinger equations with repetition rate related “low density hole” correction.

The temporal evolutions of electron density and plasma diameter of 1 kHz femtosecond laser filament in air are experimentally investigated by utilizing a pump-probe longitudinal diffraction method. A model based on scalar diffraction theory is proposed to extract the spatial phase shift of the probe pulse from the diffraction patterns by the laser air plasma channel. The hydrodynamic effect on plasma evolution at 1 kHz filament is included and analyzed. The measured initial peak electron density of ∼1018cm-3 in our experimental conditions decays rapidly by nearly two orders of magnitude within 200 ps. Moreover, the plasma channel size rises from 90 µm to 120 µm as the delay time increases. The experimental observation is in agreement with numerical simulation results by solving the rate equations of the charged particles.

Laser polarization and its intensity inside a filament core play an important role in filament-based applications. However, polarization dependent clamping intensity inside filaments has been overlooked to interpret the polarization-related filamentation phenomena. Here, we report on experimental and numerical investigations of polarization dependent clamping intensity inside a femtosecond filament in air. By adjusting the initial polarization from linear to circular, the clamping intensity is increased by 1.36 times when using a 30 cm focal length lens for filamentation. The results indicate that clamping intensity inside the filament is sensitive to laser polarization, which has to be considered to fully understand polarization-related phenomena.