Self-Focusing Revisited: Spatial Solitons, Light Bullets and Optical Pulse Collapse

Abstract

Self-focusing and self-trapping is a subject which is almost as old as the field of nonlinear optics. It is well-known that self-trapping in an optical Kerr medium is unstable in three dimensions, but it is stable when diffraction is limited to one transverse dimension, such as in a planar waveguide. Recently we have looked, both experimentally and theoretically, into several aspects of self-action of intense optical fields in nonlinear media. In this talk we will stress some of the open questions that pose a challenge for numerical works in the field.