OPTICAL BULLET HOLES

A saturable absorber in a cavity is shown to sustain stable bleached a reas which can be created by applying a short, localized address pulse s (optical bullets). These bullet-holes can be controlled and configur ed as a ''spatial soliton'' memory array. The existence and stability of these states is investigated by taking advantage of their cylindric al symmetry, and similar methods show that the Ken cavity can also sup port stable localized states.