We reveal that the competition among diffraction, cubic nonlinearity, two-photon absorption, and gain localized in both space and time results in arrest of collapse, suppression of azimuthal modulation instabilities for spatiotemporal wave packets, and formation of stable three-dimensional light bullets. We show that Gaussian spatiotemporal gain landscapes support bright, fundamental light bullets, while gain landscapes featuring a ringlike spatial and a Gaussian temporal shapes may support stable vortex bullets carrying topological phase dislocations.

Peer Reviewed