Optical-fluid dark line and X solitary waves in Kerr media

We consider the existence and propagation of nondiffractive and nondispersive spatiotemporal optical wavepackets in nonlinear Kerr media. We report analytically and confirm numerically the properties of spatiotemporal dark line solitary wave solutions of the (2 + 1)D nonlinear Schrödinger equation (NLSE). Dark lines represent holes of light on a continuous wave background. Moreover, we consider non-trivial web patterns generated under interactions of dark line solitary waves,which give birth to dark X solitary waves. These solitary waves are derived by exploiting the connection between the NLSE and a well-known equation of hydrodynamics, namely the (2 + 1)D type II Kadomtsev-Petviashvili (KP-II) equation. This finding opens a novel path for the excitation and control of optical solitary waves, of hydrodynamic nature.