We reveal that nonlocality can provide a simple physical mechanism for stabilization of multihump optical solitons and present what we believe to be the first example of stable rotating dipole solitons and soliton spiraling, which are known to be unstable in all types of realistic nonlinear media with a local response.

We demonstrate that spatial nonlocal response provides an effective physical mechanism for stabilization of recently introduced azimuthally modulated self-trapped rotating singular optical beams or azimuthons [see A. S. Desyatnikov, A. A. Sukhorukov, and Yu. S. Kivshar, Phys. Rev. Lett. 95, 203904 (2005)]. We find that stable azimuthons become possible when the nonlocality parameter exceeds a certain threshold value and, in a sharp contrast to local media, the azimuthons with N peaks can also exist for N < 2m, where m is the azimuthon topological charge.

We introduce a new class of elliptically modulated self-trapped singular beams in isotropic nonlinear media where nonlocality plays a crucial role in their existence. The analytical expressions in the highly nonlocal nonlinear limit of these elliptically shaped self-trapped beams, or ellipticons, is obtained and their existence in more general nonlocal nonlinear media is demonstrated. We show that the ellipticons represent a generalization of several known self-trapped beams, for example vortex solitons, azimuthons, and the Hermite and Laguerre solitons clusters. For the limit of the highly nonlocal nonlinear medium, the ellipticons are described in close form in terms of the InceGauss functions.

We put forward a powerful technique that allows generating quasi-non-diffracting light beams with a variety of complex transverse shapes and topologies. We show that, e.g., spiraling patterns, patterns featuring curved or bent bright stripes, or patterns featuring arbi-