Colliding laser plasmas formed in air

Initial results from time resolved imaging on the formation of a plasma in ambient air, with properties akin to those of the stagnation layer that can be formed at the collision front between two expanding plasmas in vacuo, are reported. Our proposed method for creating stagnation in air at atmospheric pressure is to take a single laser pulse focused into the vertex of a V-shaped channel so the plasma formed on the two surfaces of the V-shaped channel will expand normal to the surface, interact with each-other and potentially stagnate. Time-resolved broadband imaging was used to track the plume expansion and evolution of the plasma.