Nonlinear space-time dynamics in microstructured systems
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I will review recent research activities on the spatio-temporal dynamics of ultrashort pulses in microstructured photonic lattices obtained particularly at the Abbe Center of Photonics of the Friedrich Schiller University Jena in Germany. In particular, I will show that photonic lattices allow to stabilize otherwise unstable nonlinear waves. Using this stabilization scheme we are able to observe experimentally the evolution of light bullets which are fully symmetric stable three dimensional nonlinear objects in space and time. The preparation and observation of such pulsed beams provides major experimental challenges. Hence besides general principles, details of the experimental techniques will be discussed as well. Our resent experimental results open an entirely new domain of optical research on complex nonlinear space-time solutions which might eventually become important for the control of light in applications under extremely nonlinear conditions.