Measurement and calculation of nonlinear absorption associated with femtosecond filaments in water

We investigate the filamentation dynamics of 200 fs, 527 nm laser pulses in water. By comparing the experimental results with the numerical simulations that use an extended propagation model, the influence of several physical effects, particularly nonlinear losses and free electron plasma generation, is studied. It is shown that a set of relevant numerical values, related to multiphoton absorption, can be extracted with reasonable accuracy.