Formation of soliton-like light beams in an aqueous suspension of polystyrene particles

Experimental Observation of Modulation Instability and Optical Spatial Soliton Arrays in Soft Condensed Matter

“…These results represent the first conclusive experimental realization of both MI and OSS arrays in colloidal suspensions [11,12]. We note Yashin et al have indicated the formation of soliton-like beams bulk colloidal samples but stress that no conclusive demonstration of spatial solitons or any inference of MI was forthcoming in that study [16].…”

“…Ashkin and co-workers indicated the potential of bulk colloidal suspensions to act as artificial Kerr medium in a number of nonlinear optical experiments, including self-focusing, optical bistability and four-wave mixing [13][14][15]. The nonlinearity is an electrostrictive effect arising from optical gradient forces experienced by the dielectric particulates, which cause them to aggregate at regions of high intensity, thereby locally increasing the refractive index and leading to a selffocusing effect [16].…”

Spatial solitons and light-induced instabilities in colloidal media

“…The effect of nonlinear interaction of light with suspensions of nanometer-sized colloidal dielectric particles has been known for over two decades [1][2][3][4]. Yet, very recently the interest in these systems has been revived [5][6][7], with several attempts to tackle the physics beyond the simple Kerr limit [8][9][10][11]. The origin of relatively high optical nonlinearity, first predicted by Palmer [1] in the case of aerosols of dielectric spheres, is due to the optical gradient force acting on the dielectric particles.…”

Interactions between self-channeled optical beams in soft-matter systems with artificial nonlinearities

“…This was first shown by Smith et al in a polystyrene nano-suspension arrangement where the effective nonlinear coefficient was found to be approximately 10 5 times that of CS 2 [17]. In dielectric nano-suspensions, two main mechanisms can contribute to beam self-trapping, light scattering effects (i.e., optical gradient forces) [7][8][9][10][11][12], and thermal effects, which mainly act by virtue of thermophoresis [18,19]. In the case where gradient optical forces are involved, a self-focusing nonlinearity is established through a driven particle migration [9].…”

“…Recently, the nonlinear optical properties of dielectric nano-suspensions have attracted considerable attention [7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16]. In this class of artificial material systems, the nonlinearities can be exceedingly high.…”