title: Oscillatory neck instability of spatial bright solitons in hyperbolic systems.
abstract: The breakup of spatial bright optical solitons due to oscillatory neck instability is experimentally studied by propagating a laser beam in normally dispersive and self-focusing Kerr media. This intriguing and unusual phenomenon, recently predicted for solitons of the (2+1)-dimensional hyperbolic nonlinear Schrödinger (NLS) equation, is observed in the spatially resolved temporal spectrum. The snake instability that is known to occur in hyperbolic systems is also demonstrated to validate our experimental approach. Our results not only apply to photonics but also to other fields of physics, such as hydrodynamics or plasma physics, in which the hyperbolic NLS equation is used as a canonical model.
authors.affiliation: Service OPERA-photonique, Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), 50 Avenue F. D. Roosevelt, CP194/5 B-1050 Bruxelles, Belgium.
authors.forename: S-P
authors.initials: SP
authors.lastname: Gorza
authors.forename: P
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Kockaert
authors.forename: Ph
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Emplit
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Haelterman