Water droplet formation in a cloud chamber induced by ultra short laser pulses

Summary form only given. The interaction between ultra short pulses with peak powers exceeding the critical power of self-focusing in gases and the atmosphere have investigated by several groups today. Highly nonlinear effects like self-phase modulation, self-focusing or four-wave mixing together with ionization processes could lead to the formation of filaments and the generation of white light. Within the Teramobile project, we have observed propagation distances of these filament ensembles, which also called a channel, of 20 m or more. We have designed a diffusion cloud chamber to study the ionization process of femtosecond laser pulses. The laser light ionizes the supersaturated atmosphere along its path inside the chamber. Using different techniques the traces of droplets due to condensation processes could be observed. Furthermore, dependencies of several parameters for the droplet generation process like humidity, temperature, chirp setting and laser power could be changed.