DARK OPTICAL BULLETS IN LIGHT SELF-TRAPPING

Dark optical bullets-the stationary states of pulsed (3 + 1)-dimensional dark self-trapped beams propagating in uniform self-defocusing Kerr-law media without change in space and time-are found possible in the anomalous dispersion region, and the states are shown to be stable. This contrasts with the corresponding light bullets in self-focusing media that collapse in Kerr-law nonlinearity. On the other hand, in the normal dispersion region the pulsed dark self-trapped beams break as a result of the combined effects of diffraction, dispersion, and nonlinearity.