Spatiotemporal optical solitons: an overview

摘要

A new topic in both theoretical and experimental studies of optical solitons is provided by the possibility of existence of spatiotemporal optical solitons (sometimes called "light bullets" or "superspikes"), which are completely localized pulses of light. These fully localized Spatiotemporal physical objects result from the simultaneous balance of diffraction and dispersion by nonlinear phase modulation. They hold promise for potential applications in ultrafast all-optical processing devices, where each Spatiotemporal soliton may represent an elementary bit of information, provided that, stable "light bullets" can be formed from pulses at reasonable energy levels in available optical materials. A brief up-to-date survey of recent theoretical and experimental studies in the field of Spatiotemporal solitons in optical media is given.