Stabilization of a (3+1)-dimensional soliton in a Kerr medium by a rapidly oscillating dispersion coefficient

Using the numerical solution of the nonlinear Schrödinger equation and a variational method it is shown that (3+1)-dimensional spatiotemporal optical solitons can be stabilized by a rapidly oscillating dispersion coefficient in a Kerr medium with cubic nonlinearity. This has immediate consequence in generating dispersion-managed robust optical soliton in communication as well as possible stabilized Bose-Einstein condensates in periodic optical-lattice potential via an effective-mass formulation. We also critically compare the present stabilization with that obtained by a rapid sinusoidal oscillation of the Kerr nonlinearity parameter. © 2005 The American Physical Society.