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APS » Journals » Phys. Rev. Lett. » Volume 91 » Issue 9
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Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 093904 (2003) [4 pages]

Spontaneously Generated X-Shaped Light Bullets

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P. Di Trapani1, G. Valiulis2, A. Piskarskas2, O. Jedrkiewicz1, J. Trull1, C. Conti3, and S. Trillo3,4
1Istituto Nazionale di Fisica della Materia (INFM) and Department of Chemical, Physical and Mathematical Sciences, University of Insubria, Via Valleggio 11, 22100 Como, Italy
2Department of Quantum Electronics, Vilnius University, Sauletekio avenue 9, LT-2040 Vilnius, Lithuania
3Istituto Nazionale di Fisica della Materia (INFM)-RM3, Via della Vasca Navale 84, 00146 Roma, Italy
4Department of Engineering, University of Ferrara, Via Saragat 1, 44100 Ferrara, Italy

Received 17 March 2003; published 28 August 2003

See accompanying Physics Focus

We observe the formation of an intense optical wave packet fully localized in all dimensions, i.e., both longitudinally (in time) and in the transverse plane, with an extension of a few tens of fsec and microns, respectively. Our measurements show that the self-trapped wave is an X-shaped light bullet spontaneously generated from a standard laser wave packet via the nonlinear material response (i.e., second-harmonic generation), which extend the soliton concept to a new realm, where the main hump coexists with conical tails which reflect the symmetry of linear dispersion relationship.

© 2003 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.91.093904
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.91.093904
PACS:
42.65.Tg, 05.45.Yv, 42.65.Jx
 
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