Affiliation:
1. Tel Aviv University Department of Physical Electronics, School of Electrical Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, and Center for Light-Matter Interaction, , 39040 Ramat Aviv, Tel Aviv, Israel
Abstract
This section aims to summarize, in a reasonably brief form, experimental results, which demonstrate the existence of stable and quasi-stable 2D solitons in nonlinear optics. All these objects are (2+1)-dimensional localized states observed in the spatial domain, i.e., essentially, as beams (single ones or arrayed beams in the case of solitons necklaces), which are uniform (or quasi-uniform) along the propagation direction (z), being self-trapped in the transverse (x, y) plane. As usual, the range of experimental findings is much narrower than the variety of theoretical predictions reported for the same settings (which are outlined in Chap. 3). In particular, while the existence of stable (2+1)D fundamental solitons is a well-established experimental fact, vortex solitons have been observed, thus far by Reyna et al. [Phys. Rev. A 93, 013840 (2016)], only in a transient quasi-stable form. In addition to that experimental result, the present chapter reports the creation of quasi-stable necklace-shaped arrays of beams carrying overall vorticity and rotating states in the form of a “propeller.” No experimental observation of stable (3+1)D spatiotemporal optical solitons, in any form, has been reported as yet {as mentioned in Chap. 1, spatiotemporal solitons of the effective (1+1+1)D type, i.e., ones self-trapped in the temporal (longitudinal) and one spatial (transverse) directions, were created in an optical medium with the quadratic (χ(2)) nonlinearity by Liu et al. [Phys. Rev. E 62, 1328–1340 (2000)]}.
Publisher
AIP Publishing LLCMelville, New York