Light bullets in nonlinear periodically curved waveguide arrays

Abstract

We predict that stable mobile spatiotemporal solitons can exist in arrays of periodically curved optical waveguides. We find two-dimensional light bullets in planar arrays with harmonic waveguide bending and three-dimensional bullets in square lattices with helical waveguide bending using variational formalism. Stability of the light-bullet solutions is confirmed by the direct numerical simulations which show that the light bullets can freely move across the curved arrays. This mobility property is a distinguishing characteristic compared to previously considered discrete light bullets which were trapped to a specific lattice site. These results suggest new possibilities for flexible spatiotemporal manipulation of optical pulses in photonic lattices.