The majority of filamentation studies have focused on near infrared (NIR) filaments, which have been demonstrated to propagate over many times the Rayleigh range with clamped intensity, electron plasma density, and beam diameter. Long wavelength infrared (LWIR) laser light sources, however, have not been extensively studied for filamentation. Here, we discuss filamentation in both wavelength regimes and introduce a new ultrafast CO2 system capable of producing high-power 10 µm picosecond pulses. Future work is outlined which will significantly increase the output power of the CO2 laser for upcoming studies and allow direct comparison of NIR and LWIR filaments.
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