Nature of Spatiotemporal Light Bullets in Bulk Kerr Media

Majus, D.; Tamošauskas, G.; Gražulevičiūtė, Ieva; Garejev, N.; Lotti, Antonio; Couairon, Arnaud; Faccio, Daniele; Dubietis, A.

doi:10.1103/physrevlett.112.193901

Cited by 99 publications

(70 citation statements)

References 52 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Light bullets were generated by focussing into an 8 mm long sapphire crystal with a f = +100 mm lens 100 fs tunable pulses from an optical parametric amplifier (TOPAS-C, Light Conversion Ltd.) operating at 1 kHz repetition rate and for an input energy of 2.5 µJ in agreement with previous observations [19]. The input energy was monitored with a pyroelectric detector.…”

supporting

confidence: 53%

“…In conclusion, laser pulses propagating in a bulk nonlinear medium with anomalous GVD undergo a spontaneous reshaping into a 3D light bullet that, although being a distinctly non-solitonic pulse [19], exhibits characteristics features such as the emission of resonant radiation that are commonly observed for 1D solitons. Yet, the additional spatial degree of freedom leads to significantly richer dynamics and, in particular, to a spatio-temporal collapse that is characterised by rogue wave statistics in the amplitude of the resonant radiation.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…On the other hand, in the anomalous GVD all three dimensions contribute to the spatio-temporal collapse with formation of light bullets [18]. Although such light bullets lend themselves to a tempting analogy with 1D fundamental solitons, recent work has shown that in fact 3D light bullets correspond to a form of polychromatic (weakly localised) Bessel beam that emerges spontaneously during the collapse phase of an initially Gaussian-shaped wavepacket [19]. Despite this difference, light bullets do exhibit remarkable similarities with 1D solitons: (i) they appear to propagate quasi-undistorted without pulse splitting as observed in the normal GVD regime; (ii) temporal compression may occur in a fashion similar to soliton compression and (iii) their propagation in the presence of higher-order dispersion perturbation is accompanied by the emission of a resonant radiation (RR) often referred to as a dispersive wave [18,20,21].…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Extreme events in resonant radiation from three-dimensional light bullets

et al. 2014

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We report measurements that show extreme events in the statistics of resonant radiation emitted from spatiotemporal light bullets. We trace the origin of these extreme events back to instabilities leading to steep gradients in the temporal profile of the intense light bullet that occur during the initial collapse dynamics. Numerical simulations reproduce the extreme valued statistics of the resonant radiation which are found to be intrinsically linked to the simultaneous occurrence of both temporal and spatial self-focusing dynamics. Small fluctuations in both the input energy and in the spatial phase curvature explain the observed extreme behaviour.The first direct measurement of extreme or rogue wave in the ocean [1] has triggered a large number of studies and renewed interest in what used to be believed as a "sailor's tale". Extreme events have since been observed in many other systems illustrating the wide range of underlying dynamics that can lead to their appearance [2,3]. In an optical context, the recent observation that solitons with extreme spectral red-shifts can emerge from an incoherent fibre supercontinuum [4] has attracted considerable attention and subsequent studies have highlighted the role of nonlinear noise amplification in the spontaneous emergence of highly localised structures [5,6] and the role of collisions in observing long tail statistics [7][8][9].While most rogue waves studies in optics have focussed on the 1+1D fibre case (one spatial dimension and one temporal dimension), the emergence of extreme events during full 3D propagation of light pulses with nonlinear spatio-temporal dynamics has been much less studied [11][12][13][14]. In the normal group velocity dispersion (GVD) regime, the combined action of spatial and temporal selffocusing leads to the formation of a dynamically stable filament characterised by an intense, localised peak surrounded by a weaker reservoir that continuously refuels the central core region [10]. In this regime, long tail statistics in the fluctuations at the spectral edge of a single filament similar to that of an incoherent fibre supercontinuum have been observed [11,12,14]. More recently, extreme events in the multi-filament regime where localized structures emerge from filaments merging have been measured experimentally [13].Strictly speaking, 3D stable solitons do not exist and the physical structure closest to a soliton is the 2D Townes spatial profile [15,16] which is unstable and leads to self-similar collapse of the laser beam in the normal GVD regime when the beam power exceeds the critical power for self-focusing [17]. On the other hand, in the anomalous GVD all three dimensions contribute to the spatio-temporal collapse with formation of light bullets [18]. Although such light bullets lend themselves to a tempting analogy with 1D fundamental solitons, recent work has shown that in fact 3D light bullets correspond to a form of polychromatic (weakly localised) Bessel beam that emerges spontaneously during the collapse phase of an initially Gauss...

show abstract

supporting

confidence: 53%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Extreme events in resonant radiation from three-dimensional light bullets

et al. 2014

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…[17], another new kind of significantly different filamentation process has been observed in bulk fused silica by pumping into the anomalous dispersion regime. This regime is known to exhibit much more complicated dynamics but also to include the advantage of solitary solutions with full spatiotemporal localization and stationarity, known as light bullets [18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26]. In a filament, these conditions cannot be exactly fulfilled [1,2] due to a high number of inherent perturbations [27], but the observations in Ref.…”

mentioning

confidence: 91%

Regularizing Aperiodic Cycles of Resonant Radiation in Filament Light Bullets

et al. 2017

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We demonstrate an up to now unrecognized and very effective mechanism which prevents filament collapse and allows persistent self-guiding propagation retaining a large portion of the optical energy on axis over unexpected long distances. The key ingredient is the possibility of continuously leaking energy into the normal dispersion regime via the emission of resonant radiation. The frequency of the radiation is determined by the dispersion dynamically modified by photogenerated plasma, thus allowing us to excite new frequencies in spectral ranges which are otherwise difficult to access.

show abstract

“…In practice, the refractive index modulation is possible with the use of an external DC field in any environment that allows for either Kerr or Faraday effects, and which contains CNTs. It is worth adding that the light bullets have recently been reported in pure Kerr media [22,23]. Note that the simple considerations given in Ref.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%