Robust bistable light bullets

Abstract

The robust (solitonlike) nature of bistable light bullets is demonstrated numerically for some illustrative models through three-dimensional switching simulations and collision studies. Bistable light bullets are propagating, spheroidal, bright optical solitons characterized by different sizes and intensity profiles but with the same energy.

Generation of a train of three-dimensional optical solitons in a self-focusing medium

“…It was shown in Ref. [3] that these 3D self-focused pulses are robust in the sense that they remain as separate solitary formations even after collisions. This behavior resembles that of solitons in 1D integrable systems, so we can call them "3D solitons. "…”

Three-dimensional spatiotemporal optical solitons in nonlocal nonlinear media

“…However, solitons in media with the cubic self-focusing nonlinearity, obeying the nonlinear Schrö dinger (NLS) equation, are unstable in two and three dimensions (2D and 3D), because of the occurrence of collapse in the same model [3]. Several possibilities to arrest the collapse were considered, such as periodic alternation of focusing and defocusing layers [4] and various generalizations of this setting [5], and the use of media exhibiting saturable [6] or quadratic (χ (2) ) [7] nonlinearities; tandem structures, composed of alternating linear and χ (2) layers, were also proposed [8]. The only successful experiment in this field was the creation of quasi-(2+1)-dimensional STSs in bulk χ (2) samples [2,9].…”

Stabilization of three-dimensional light bullets by a transverse lattice in a Kerr medium with dispersion management

“…Search for spatiotemporal solitons in diverse optical media, alias "light bullets" (LBs) [1], is a challenge to fundamental and applied research in nonlinear optics, see original works [2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10] and a very recent review [11]. Stationary solutions for LBs can easily be found in the cubic (χ (3) ) multidimensional nonlinear Schrödinger (NLS) equation [1], but their stability is a problem, as they are unstable against spatiotemporal collapse [12].…”