LUCIAN-CORNEL CRASOVAN¹, BORIS A MALOMED ² and DUMITRU MIHALACHE¹

¹ Department of Theoretical Physics, Institute of Atomic Physics, P.O. Box MG-6, Bucharest, Romania

² Department of Interdisciplinary Sciences, Faculty of Engineering, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv 69978, Israel

Abstract.

We review recent theoretical results concerning the existence, stability and unique features of families of bright vortex solitons (doughnuts, or `spinning' solitons) in both conservative and dissipative cubic-quintic nonlinear media.

Keywords:  Optical solitons; spinning solitons; spiral solitons.

Pacs Nos.  42.65.Tg; 42.81.Dp