Spatiotemporal Airy Light Bullets in the Linear and Nonlinear Regimes

We demonstrate the realization of intense Airy-Airy-Airy (${\mathrm{\text{Airy}}}^3$) light bullets by combining a spatial Airy beam with an Airy pulse in time. The ${\mathrm{\text{Airy}}}^3$ light bullets belong to a family of linear spatiotemporal wave packets that do not require any specific tuning of the material optical properties for their formation and withstand both diffraction and dispersion during their propagation. We show that the ${\mathrm{\text{Airy}}}^3$ light bullets are robust up to the high intensity regime, since they are capable of healing the nonlinearly induced distortions of their spatiotemporal profile.

Figure 1

Normalized spatial and temporal profiles of the ${\mathrm{\text{Airy}}}^3$ wave packet: (a) initial and (b)–(e) after propagation through $(1.2L_R,0.8L_D)$, $(3.6L_R,2.3L_D)$, $(6L_R,3.9L_D)$, and $(8.3L_R,5.4L_D)$, respectively. $L_R$ and $L_D$ are the diffraction and dispersion lengths, respectively.

Figure 2

(a) Intensity isosurface of the experimentally realized ${\mathrm{\text{Airy}}}^3$ light bullet (to assist visualization, the $z$ axis, time, is stretched by 5 times). (b) Temporal and spatial widths of the ${\mathrm{\text{Airy}}}^3$ wave packet’s main lobe vs propagation distance.

Figure 3

Spatial profiles, representing the fluence distribution, of the ${\mathrm{\text{Airy}}}^3$ light bullet at the exit surface of a 2.5-cm-long PMMA sample for (a) 0.4, (b) 0.64, and (c) 1.1 mJ total energies. (d) Respective temporal profiles at a distance of 20 cm from the sample exit.

Figure 4

Spatial profiles, representing the fluence distribution, of the ${\mathrm{\text{Airy}}}^3$ light bullet with total energy of 0.4 mJ (a) at the exit surface of the sample and (b) after $z=9\mathrm{cm}$ of propagation in air. (c) Respective temporal profiles at $z=20\mathrm{cm}$ (○) and $z=80\mathrm{cm}$ (□) after the exit surface of the sample.