We propose a scheme to realize an optical Bessel potential with parity-time ($\mathcal{P}T$) symmetry and investigate the existence, propagation, and manipulation of multidimensional optical solitons through the interplay among diffraction, Kerr nonlinearity, and potential confinement in a cold atomic gas under the condition of electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT). We show that the system supports not only two-dimensional stationary optical solitons but also rotary ones; the stability of such solitons can be actively controlled by the gain-loss component (imaginary part), while the rotary motions can be tuned by the refractive-index component (real part) of the $\mathcal{P}T$-symmetric potential. Moreover, we demonstrate that the system allows the existence of stable three-dimensional spatiotemporal optical solitons, i.e., optical bullets, which have ultraslow propagation velocity and display helicoidal motions with controllable propagation trajectories. Due to the Kerr nonlinearity enhanced by the EIT effect, extremely low power is needed to create these multidimensional optical solitons. The results reported here are useful not only for the generation and manipulation of high-dimensional solitons via $\mathcal{P}T$-symmetric potentials, but also for promising applications in optical information processing and transmission.

• Received 5 January 2023
• Revised 27 March 2023
• Accepted 17 April 2023

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevA.107.053501