Kompetenzzentrum für optische Spezialfasern

We report the first experimental observation of three-dimensional light bullets, excited by femtosecond pulses in a system featuring quasi-instantaneous cubic nonlinearity and a periodic, transversally modulated refractive index. Stringent evidence of the excitation of light bullets is based on time-gated images and spectra which perfectly match our numerical simulations. Furthermore, we reveal a novel evolution mechanism forcing the light bullets to follow varying dispersion or diffraction conditions, until they leave their existence range and decay.