We demonstrate for the first time the possibility to generate long plasma channels up to a distance of 1 km, using the terawatt femtosecond T&T laser facility. The plasma density was optimized by adjusting the chirp, the focusing and beam diameter. The interaction of filaments with transparent and opaque targets was studied.

Two-dimensional parallel optical interconnects (2-D-POIs) are capable of providing large connectivity between elements in computing and switching systems. Using this technology we have demonstrated a bidirectional optical interconnect between two printed circuit boards containing optoelectronic (OE) very large scale integration (VLSI) circuits. The OE-VLSI circuits were constructed using vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSELs) and photodiodes (PDs) flip-chip bump-bonded to a 0.35m complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) chip. The CMOS was comprised of 256 laser driver circuits, 256 receiver circuits, and the corresponding buffering and control circuits required to operate the large transceiver array. This is the first system, to our knowledge, to send bidirectional data optically between OE-VLSI chips that have both VCSELs and photodiodes cointegrated on the same substrate.

Microwave guiding was demonstrated over 16cm in air using a large diameter hollow plasma waveguide. The waveguide was generated with the 100TW femtosecond laser system at the Advanced Laser Light Source facility. A deformable mirror was used to spatially shape the intense laser pulses in order to generate hundreds of filaments judiciously distributed in a cylindrical shape, creating a cylindrical plasma wall that acts as a microwave waveguide. The microwaves were confined for about 10ns, which corresponds to the free electron plasma wall recombination time. The characteristics of the plasma waveguide and the results of microwave guiding are presented.

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Remote terahertz (THz) generation from a two-color femtosecond laser-induced filament in air was experimentally demonstrated. A record of remote THz emission at 16 m was achieved. THz pulse energy more than 250 nJ in the frequency range below 5.5 THz was recorded; this is two orders of magnitude stronger than that from single-color excitation. Back-scattered nitrogen (N2) fluorescence signal remotely measured with a lidar is linearly proportional to the THz emission, which would provide a more practical method to characterize the THz pulses.