Single-component higher-order mode solitons in liquid crystals

Hutsebaut, Xavier; Cambournac, Cyril; Haelterman, Marc; Adamski, Artur; Neyts, Kristiaan

doi:10.1016/j.optcom.2004.01.040

Cited by 91 publications

(53 citation statements)

References 23 publications

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“…It has been shown that even out-of-phase bright spatial solitons, which in a local medium always repel, experienced strong attraction that can only be overcome by a sufficiently large initial divergence of the soliton trajectories [54]. As a consequence of the nonlocality induced attraction, bound states of out-of-phase bright solitons can be formed [55]. In this section we will describe a novel phenomenon of attraction of dark solitons [56] in nonlocal nonlinear media with a self-defocusing nonlin- earity [57].…”

Section: Interaction Of Dark Nonlocal Solitonsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modulational instability, solitons and beam propagation in spatially nonlocal nonlinear media

Królikowski

Bang

Nikolov

et al. 2004

J. Opt. B: Quantum Semiclass. Opt.

397

322

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Section: Interaction Of Dark Nonlocal Solitonsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Modulational instability, solitons and beam propagation in spatially nonlocal nonlinear media

Królikowski

Bang

Nikolov

et al. 2004

J. Opt. B: Quantum Semiclass. Opt.

397

322

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“…In principle, nonlocality acts to spread out the effects of localized excitations, and as such it can suppress modulation instabilities of homogeneous states [16]. However, in spite of the natural ''averaging'' tendency inherent to nonlocality, even highly nonlocal nonlinear media can support solitons [2,5,[17][18][19][20]. Moreover, it was suggested that nonlocality can prevent the catastrophic collapse of self-focused beams, allowing 2 1 D solitons in Kerr-type media [2,17,21].…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In a similar vein, it was proposed that nonlocality can suppress azimuthal instabilities of vortex-ring beams [22,23], but such an experiment has thus far never been reported. Finally, nonlocality can considerably alter soliton interactions, e.g., giving rise to attraction between out of phase solitons [19,20,24] and between dark solitons [25], which without nonlocality always repel, and causing attraction between well separated solitons [26].…”

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confidence: 99%

Solitons in Nonlinear Media with an Infinite Range of Nonlocality: First Observation of Coherent Elliptic Solitons and of Vortex-Ring Solitons

et al. 2005

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We present an experimental study on wave propagation in highly nonlocal optically nonlinear media, for which far-away boundary conditions significantly affect the evolution of localized beams. As an example, we set the boundary conditions to be anisotropic and demonstrate the first experimental observation of coherent elliptic solitons. Furthermore, exploiting the natural ability of such nonlinearities to eliminate azimuthal instabilities, we perform the first observation of stable vortex-ring solitons. These features of highly nonlocal nonlinearities affected by far-away boundary conditions open new directions in nonlinear science by facilitating remote control over soliton propagation. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.95.213904 PACS numbers: 42.65.Tg, 42.65.Jx, 47.27.Te Nonlocality plays an important role in many areas of nonlinear physics. Nonlocality typically arises from an underlying transport mechanism (heat [1], atoms in a gas [2], charge carriers [3,4], etc.) or from long-range forces (e.g., electrostatic interactions in liquid crystals [5]) and many-body interactions as with matter waves in BoseEinstein condensates [6] or plasma waves [7]. In nonlinear optics specifically, nonlocality was found in photorefractives [3,[8][9][10], in thermal nonlinear media [11][12][13][14], in atomic vapors [2], and in liquid crystals [5,15]. In principle, nonlocality acts to spread out the effects of localized excitations, and as such it can suppress modulation instabilities of homogeneous states [16]. However, in spite of the natural ''averaging'' tendency inherent to nonlocality, even highly nonlocal nonlinear media can support solitons [2,5,[17][18][19][20]. Moreover, it was suggested that nonlocality can prevent the catastrophic collapse of self-focused beams, allowing 2 1 D solitons in Kerr-type media [2,17,21]. In a similar vein, it was proposed that nonlocality can suppress azimuthal instabilities of vortex-ring beams [22,23], but such an experiment has thus far never been reported. Finally, nonlocality can considerably alter soliton interactions, e.g., giving rise to attraction between out of phase solitons [19,20,24] and between dark solitons [25], which without nonlocality always repel, and causing attraction between well separated solitons [26].Here we present an experimental study on solitons in a nonlinear medium with an extremely large range of nonlocality, such that far-away boundary conditions directly affect the soliton beam. We use the thermal optical nonlinearity in lead glass, which is of the self-focusing type. The nonlocal nature of this thermal nonlinearity is manifested in the heat-transfer (Poisson-type) equation, for which boundary conditions greatly influence the temperature distribution. The nonlinear index change is proportional to the temperature change; hence, the boundary conditions, even from afar, significantly affect the refractive index structure supporting solitons. We show that setting transversely anisotropic boundary conditions (e.g., rectangular boundaries in the transverse plane) f...

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“…The picture changes drastically when the nonlinear material response is nonlocal. Nonlocality has profound effects on the complexity of solitons since it allows to overcome repulsion between out-of-phase bright [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17] or in-phase dark solitons [18] that can form bound states observed in one-dimensional settings [19,20]. In two transverse dimensions, however, the only complex structures thus far observed with scalar solitons were bright vortex-rings [21].…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%