Stability of the higher-bound states in a saturable self-focusing medium.

We present an investigation of the stability of the cylindrically symmetric higher-bound states that can be formed in a self-focusing medium with saturation. The higher-bound states are found to display transverse instabilities that break the azimuthal symmetry of the system. An approximate analytic theory is presented that correctly describes the qualitative variations of the numerically calculated instability growth rates.