Light bullet explained

Light bullets are localized pulses of electromagnetic energy that can travel through a medium and retain their spatiotemporal shape in spite of diffraction and dispersion which tend to spread the pulse. This is made possible by a balance between the non-linear self-focusing and spreading effects brought about by the medium in which the pulse beam propagates.[1]

Prediction and Discovery

Light bullets were predicted and so termed by Yaron Silberberg in 1990,[2] and demonstrated the following decade.

Comparison with solitons

Spatial and temporal stability which are the characteristics of a soliton have been achieved in light bullets using alternative refractive index models. An experiment which exploited the discrete spreading and self-focusing effects on 170-femtosecond pulses at 1550-nanometre wavelengths by a two-dimensional hexagonal array of silica waveguides reported a spatial profiles stationary for about twice as far as it would be in linear propagation and temporal profile about nine times stationary as that of the corresponding linear propagation.[3]

Light bullets lose energy in the process of a collision. This behavior is different from that of solitons which survive collisions without losing energy[4]

Possible applications

See also

Notes and References

  1. Viewpoint: Generation of light bullets.
  2. Silberberg. Yaron. 1990-11-15. Collapse of optical pulses. Optics Letters. EN. 15. 22. 1282–4. 10.1364/OL.15.001282. 19771066. 1539-4794. 1990OptL...15.1282S.
  3. Viewpoint: Generation of light bullets.
  4. Web site: Light bullets.
  5. Web site: Laser Triggers Lightning "Precursors" in Clouds. https://web.archive.org/web/20080709062628/http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/04/080416-lightning-lasers_2.html. dead. July 9, 2008.
  6. Web site: Laser "Light Bullets" Made to Curve. https://web.archive.org/web/20090717005545/http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2009/04/090409-light-bullets-curve.html. dead. July 17, 2009.