Spatiotemporal optical solitons

Boris A. Malomed*, Dumitru Mihalache, Frank Wise, Lluis Torner

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalReview articlepeer-review

885 Scopus citations

Abstract

In the course of the past several years, a new level of understanding has been achieved about conditions for the existence, stability, and generation of spatiotemporal optical solitons, which are nondiffracting and nondispersing wavepackets propagating in nonlinear optical media. Experimentally, effectively two-dimensional (2D) spatiotemporal solitons that overcome diffraction in one transverse spatial dimension have been created in quadratic nonlinear media. With regard to the theory, fundamentally new features of light pulses that self-trap in one or two transverse spatial dimensions and do not spread out in time, when propagating in various optical media, were thoroughly investigated in models with various nonlinearities. Stable vorticity-carrying spatiotemporal solitons have been predicted too, in media with competing nonlinearities (quadratic-cubic or cubic-quintic). This article offers an up-to-date survey of experimental and theoretical results in this field. Both achievements and outstanding difficulties are reviewed, and open problems are highlighted. Also briefly described are recent predictions for stable 2D and 3D solitons in Bose-Einstein condensates supported by full or low-dimensional optical lattices.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)R53-R72
JournalJournal of Optics B: Quantum and Semiclassical Optics
Volume7
Issue number5
DOIs
StatePublished - 1 May 2005

Keywords

  • Bose-Einstein condensation
  • Collapse
  • Dispersion management
  • Gross-Pitaevskii equation
  • Group-velocity dispersion
  • Light bullet
  • Matter-wave soliton
  • Modulational instability
  • Nonlinear Schrödinger equation
  • Nonlinear optics
  • Optical lattice

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