Azimuthal instability of spinning spatiotemporal solitons

Abstract

We find one-parameter families of three-dimensional spatiotemporal bright vortex solitons (doughnuts, or spinning light bullets), in dispersive quadratically nonlinear media. We show that they are subject to a strong instability against azimuthal perturbations, similarly to the previously studied (2+1)-dimensional bright spatial vortex solitons. The instability breaks the spinning soliton into several fragments, each being a stable nonspinning light bullet.