Three-dimensional light bullets

Three dimensional Light Bullets (3D-LBs) are the most symmetric solitary waves, being nonlinear optical wavepackets propagating without diffraction nor dispersion. Since their theoretical prediction, 3D-LB's have constituted a challenge in nonlinear science, due to the impossibility to avoid catastrophic collapse in conventional homogeneous nonlinear media. We have recently observed stable 3D-LBs in media with periodically modulated transverse refractive index profile. We found that higher order linear and nonlinear effects force the 3D-LBs to evolve along their propagation path and eventually decay. The evolution and decay mechanism entails spatiotemporal effects, which under certain conditions, leads to superluminally propagating wavepackets.

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