We demonstrate the realization of intense Airy-Airy-Airy (Airy3) light bullets by combining a spatial Airy beam with an Airy pulse in time. The Airy3 light bullets belong to a family of linear spatiotemporal wave packets that do not require any specific tuning of the material optical properties for their formation and withstand both diffraction and dispersion during their propagation. We show that the Airy3 light bullets are robust up to the high intensity regime, since they are capable of healing the nonlinearly induced distortions of their spatiotemporal profile.

We demonstrate the existence of an additional class of stationary accelerating Airy wave forms that exist in the presence of third-order (Kerr) nonlinearity and nonlinear losses. Numerical simulations and experiments, in agreement with the analytical model, highlight how these stationary solutions sustain the nonlinear evolution of Airy beams. The generic nature of the Airy solution allows extension of these results to other settings, and a variety of applications are suggested.

The nonlinear dynamics of intense truncated Airy beams in Kerr ionizing media are investigated from numerical simulations and experiments. We show numerically that a competition between the linear and nonlinear effects takes place and may be modified by tuning the width of the main lobe of the Airy beam and the size of the truncating diaphragm. Our analysis shows that the acceleration of the Airy peak, an inherent feature of linear Airy beam propagation, is preserved only for powers in the main Airy lobe below a certain threshold. Nonlinear propagation of intense Airy beams with low power in the main lobe is sustained by a continuous energy flux from its neighbors, similarly to the mechanism sustaining nonlinear Bessel beam propagation. Airy beams with higher powers in the main lobe are reshaped into a multifilamentary pattern induced by Kerr and multiphoton nonlinearities. The nucleation of new filaments and their interaction affect the acceleration of the main Airy lobes. We finally show that the size of the truncation constitutes a control parameter for the energy flux that features the Airy beam acceleration. Experiments performed in water corroborate the existence of these two distinct nonlinear propagation regimes.

Optical aberrations are usually considered a drawback in optical systems. Here we show that through them a net cubic phase modulation can be imprinted on the wave front of a light beam, which after spatial Fourier transformation creates Airy beams. Experiments and supporting simulations demonstrate that appropriately adjusted cylindrical lenses can produce both one- and two-dimensional tunable Airy beams. The use of simple optical elements makes the approach attractive and convenient for generating intense femtosecond Airy beams and filaments. Moreover, we show that the Airy tunability is an excellent means of obtaining tailored filaments in both size and intensity.

The creation of volume plasma density gratings in air by temporally overlapped high-intensity IR femtosecond laser pulses is demonstrated experimentally. Through the diffraction of various probe beams the plasma grating properties are recovered including its thickness and refractive index modulation, as well as its decay dynamics. The diffraction properties of these plasma photonic devices suggest that they can be used in applications involving high intensity lasers, such as filamentation, where no physical objects can be placed in the path of the laser beams.

We study, both experimentally and theoretically, the underlying physics of third-harmonic generation in air by a filamented infrared femtosecond laser pulse propagating through a thin plasma channel. It is shown that the recently observed more than two-order-of-magnitude increase of the efficiency of third-harmonic generation occurs due to the plasma-enhanced third-order susceptibility. An estimate of the effective value of this susceptibility is given.