A dissipative attractor in the spatiotemporal collapse of ultrashort light pulses

Spatiotemporal self-focusing in nonlinear lossy media pushes ultrashort pulses towards a universal, non-solitary and non-conical light-bullet wave state defined by the medium solely, and characterized by maximum energy losses. Its stationary propagation relies on a balance between nonlinear losses and the refuelling effect of self-focusing. No balancing gain is required for stationarity. These purely lossy dissipative light-bullets can explain many aspects of the filamentary dynamics in nonlinear media with anomalous dispersion. (C) 2010 Optical Society of America