Optical crystals and light-bullets in Kerr resonators

Stable light bullets and clusters of them are presented in the monostable regime using the mean-field Lugiato–Lefever equation [Gopalakrishnan, Panajotov, Taki, and Tlidi, Phys. Rev. Lett. 126, 153902 (2021)]. It is shown that three-dimensional (3D) dissipative structures occur in a strongly nonlinear regime where modulational instability is subcritical. We provide a detailed analysis on the formation of optical 3D crystals in both the super- and sub-critical modulational instability regimes, and we highlight their link to the formation of light bullets in diffractive and dispersive Kerr resonators. We construct bifurcation diagrams associated with the formation of optical crystals in both monostable and bistable regimes. An analytical study has predicted the predominance of body-centered-cubic (bcc) crystals in the intracavity field over a large variety of other 3D solutions with less symmetry. These results have been obtained using a weakly nonlinear analysis but have never been checked numerically. We show numerically that indeed the most robust structures over other self-organized crystals are the bcc crystals. Finally, we show that light-bullets and clusters of them can occur also in a bistable regime.