Vortex bubble formation in pair plasmas

It is shown that delocalized vortex solitons in relativistic pair plasmas with small temperature asymmetries can be unstable for intermediate intensities of the background electromagnetic field. Instability leads to the generation of ever-expanding cavitating bubbles in which the electromagnetic fields are zero. The existence of such electromagnetic bubbles is demonstrated by qualitative arguments based on a hydrodynamic analogy, and by numerical solutions of the appropriate nonlinear Schrodinger equation with a saturating nonlinearity.