Light bullet

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
  • Human-induced lightning[5]
  • Monitoring air pollution[6]

See also

References
  1. "Viewpoint: Generation of light bullets". Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  2. Silberberg, Yaron (1990-11-15). "Collapse of optical pulses". Optics Letters. 15 (22): 1282–4. Bibcode:1990OptL...15.1282S. doi:10.1364/OL.15.001282. ISSN 1539-4794. PMID 19771066.
  3. "Viewpoint: Generation of light bullets". Cite journal requires |journal= (help)
  4. "Light bullets".
  5. "Laser Triggers Lightning "Precursors" in Clouds".
  6. "Laser "Light Bullets" Made to Curve".
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