In-situ visualization of multiple filament competition dynamic during nonlinear propagation of femtosecond laser.

In this work, multiple filamentation competition of femtosecond pulse in methanol is studied both experimentally and numerically. The visualization of multiple filamentation competition has been realized in the experiment performing the three-photon fluorescence of Coumarin 440. The random changes of multiple filamentation stemmed from the jitter of the peak laser intensity ratio of initial hot spots are first observed directly and visually, which can be well explained by a simplified (2D+1)-dimensional model.