Spontaneously generated X-shaped light bullets.
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.
Di Trapani
P
P
Istituto Nazionale di Fisica della Materia (INFM) and Department of Chemical, Physical and Mathematical Sciences, University of Insubria, Via Valleggio 11, 22100 Como, Italy.
Valiulis
G
G
Piskarskas
A
A
Jedrkiewicz
O
O
Trull
J
J
Conti
C
C
Trillo
S
S