Abstract

According to traditional theories, the filamentation¹ of a laser beam as it passes through a nonlinear material is a consequence of the spatial growth^2,3 of weak wave-front perturbations initially present on the beam. To a certain extent these perturbations can be removed by passing the beam through a spatial filter before it enters the medium. However, quantum fluctuations in the field amplitudes of the transverse side modes impose perturbations that cannot be removed by spatial filtering.

© 1995 Optical Society of America