Incoherent interaction of nematicons in bias-free liquid-crystal cells

We study experimentally the propagation dynamics and interaction of a pair of mutually incoherent nematicons: spatial optical solitons in nematic liquid crystals. In contrast to earlier studies, we consider a bias-free liquid-crystal cell and compare the soliton interaction in copropagating and counterpropagating geometries. We analyze the dependence of nematicon interaction on input power and observe a direct manifestation of a long-range nonlocal nonlinearity. Attraction of counterpropagating solitons requires higher powers and longer relaxation times than that of copropagating nematicons due to losses-induced power asymmetry of counterpropagating nematicons.Comment: 5 pages, z figure

Large amplitude nematicon propagation in a liquid crystal with local response

The evolution of polarized light in a nematic liquid crystal whose directors have a local response to reorienta-tion by the light is analyzed for arbitrary input light power. Approximate equations describing this evolution are derived based on a suitable trial function in a Lagrangian formulation of the basic equations governing the electric fields involved. It is shown that the nonlinearity of the material response is responsible for the forma-tion of solitons, so-called nematicons, by saturating the nonlinearity of the governing nonlinear Schrödinger equation. Therefore in the local material response limit, solitons are formed due to the nonlinear saturation behavior. It is finally shown that the solutions of the derived approximate equations for nematicon evolution are in excellent agreement with numerical solutions of the full nematicon equations in the local regime

Lagrange solution for three wavelength solitary wave clusters in nematic liquid crystals

We investigate the interaction of three optical solitary waves propagating with angular momentum in bulk nematic liquid crystals. The resulting cluster of solitary waves, or nematicons, is shown to orbit about its common centre of "mass". An elongated isosceles triangle configuration is derived, this solution being the equivalent of the Lagrange solution of Newtonian gravitation. This triangle solution is found to be stable owing to diffractive radiation. A modulation theory explains the existence of the triangle solution as due to the non-monotonicity of an effective potential for the interaction of the solitary waves. This modulation theory also gives good agreement with numerical solutions for the trajectories of the nematicons in the three colours. Finally, it is shown that a cut-off in the shed diffractive radiation prevents the break-up of the triangle due to radiative losses. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved