Controlling the stimulated Brillouin scattering of self-focusing nanosecond laser pulses in silica glasses

We numerically investigate the interplay between Kerr self-focusing (SF) and transient stimulated Brillouin scattering (SBS) for nanosecond pulses in bulk silica. The influences of the input power, phase, or amplitude modulations in the pump pulse together with the incident beam shape on the filamentation dynamics are discussed. We show that appropriate amplitude modulations dividing nanosecond laser pumps into picosecond-long pulse trains inhibit SBS at any power. In contrast, phase-modulated pulses with comparable spectral width undergo multiple filamentation and earlier beam collapse due to modulational instabilities. We demonstrate, however, the existence of a critical pump bandwidth above which SBS can be efficiently suppressed by phase modulations even at high powers. This observation also holds for squared beam shapes with much broader spatial spectra, which decay more easily into multiple filaments over short distances. Intensity profiles of the reflected Stokes waves for such broad pumps are finally discussed.