Fermionic light in common optical media

Abstract

Recent experiments have proved that the response to short laser pulses of common optical media, such as air or Oxygen, can be described by focusing Kerr and higher order nonlinearities of alternating signs. Such media support the propagation of steady solitary waves. We argue by both numerical and analytical computations that the low power fundamental bright solitons satisfy an equation of state which is similar to that of a degenerate gas of fermions at zero temperature. Considering in particular the propagation in both $O_2$ and air, we also find that the high power solutions behave like droplets of ordinary liquids. We then show how a grid of the fermionic light bubbles can be generated and forced to merge in a liquid droplet. This leads us to propose a set of experiments aimed at the production of both the fermionic and liquid phases of light, and at the demonstration of the transition from the former to the latter.

4 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (4)

• Quantum phase transitions of light
• Discrete solitons and soliton-induced dislocations in partially-coherent photonic lattices
• Higher-order Kerr terms allow ionization-free filamentation in gases
• Observation of spontaneous self-channelling of light in air below the collapse threshold

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Transition from plasma- to Kerr-driven laser filamentation
• Optical nonlinearity in Ar and N${}_2$ near the ionization threshold
• Effect of a plasma grating on pump-probe experiments near the ionization threshold in gases
• Laser filamentation as a new phase transition universality class
• Ultrasolitons: multistability and subcritical power threshold from higher-order Kerr terms
• Modulational instability windows in the nonlinear Schrödinger equation involving higher-order Kerr responses