We study the cubic- (focusing-)quintic (defocusing) nonlinear Schrödinger equation in two transverse dimensions. We discuss a family of stationary traveling waves, including rarefaction pulses and vortex-antivortex pairs, in a background of critical amplitude. We show that these rarefaction pulses can be generated inside a flattop soliton when a smaller bright soliton collides with it. The fate...

The Linac Coherent Light Source (LCLS) is a freeelectron laser facility in construction at Stanford Linear Accelerator Center. It is designed to operate in the wavelength range 0.15-1.5 nanometers. At the time of this conference, civil construction of new tunnels and buildings is complete, the necessary modifications to the SLAC linac are complete, and the undulator system and x-ray optics/diag...

The angular and temporal distributions of light scattered around the backward direction from biological tissues are measured. An enhancement of scattered light intensity around the backward direction, which is associated with the weak photon localization, is observed. The transport mean free path l(t) and the absorption length l(a) of the light in biological tissue can be obtained from the angu...