Experiments and simulations of nonlinearly induced self-waveguiding in liquid crystals

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

We present an overview of recent advances in the understanding of optical beams in nonlinear media with a spatially nonlocal nonlinear response. We discuss the impact of nonlocality on the modulational instability of plane waves, the collapse of finite-size beams, and the formation and interaction of spatial solitons.Comment: Review article, will be published in Journal of Optics B, special issue on Optical Solitons, 6 figure

Observation of out-coupling of a nematicon

In this work we present the observation of spatial optical solitons in liquid crystal cells by recording the diffraction pattern of the out-coupled beam on a distant screen. Simultaneously, the light propagation is observed via scattering measurements. The most important observation is displacement of the beam on the screen due to the transverse undulation inside the cell. This undulation is caused by the anisotropic walk-off of the beam. The displacement is in good agreement with the values of the undulation earlier reported.SCOPUS: cp.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Simulation of 2-D lateral light propagation in nematic-liquid-crystal cells with tilted molecules and nonlinear reorientational effect

In the general case the optical tensor of a nematic liquid crystal consists of nine nonzero elements, which makes it difficult to calculate light propagation in a liquid-crystal cell. For a two-dimensional (2-D) problem with TM polarization and a parallel liquid-crystal orientation where the molecules are only tilted and not twisted, the full problem can be calculated by using one magnetic field component, thus reducing the problem to a scalar one. This geometry is used to simulate the self-focusing effect which can lead to the generation of spatial optical solitary waves. This self-focusing occurs due to the optical nonlinear effect of field-induced director reorientation. Due to nondiagonal elements of the optical tensor, however, it is expected that the Poynting vector will deviate from the original propagation direction. Our simulations reveal that, in this case, the deviation will not cause the loss of the soliton-like beam propagation regime, but will rather give rise to a transverse undulating behaviour. © Springer 2005.SCOPUS: cp.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe