Observation of light-induced reorientational effects in periodic structures with planar nematic-liquid-crystal defects

We report on the experimental studies of the light-induced reorientational effects in a one-dimensional periodic photonicstructure with an embedded planar nematic-liquid-crystal defect. We demonstrate that in the presence of a periodic structure, the self-action of light in a liquid-crystal layer demonstrates sharp power-dependent characteristics for the intensity-dependent optical transmission. Robustness of the effect suggests its applications for all-optical tunable photonic devices.This work was supported by the Australian Research Council through Discovery and Center of Excellence projects

Supermode spatial optical solitons in liquid crystals with competing nonlinearities

We study numerically the formation of spatial optical solitons in nematic liquid crystals with competing nonlocal nonlinearities. We demonstrate that at a sufficiently high input power the interplay between focusing and thermally induced defocusing may lead to the formation of two-peak fundamental spatial solitons. These solitons have a constant spatial phase and hence represent supermodes of the self-induced extended waveguide structure. We show that these two-peak solitons are stable in propagation and exhibit an adiabatic transition to a single-peak state under weak absorptionThis work was supported by the Qatar National Research Fund (Grant No. NPRP8-246-1-060) and the Polish National Science Centre (Grant No. UMO-2012/06/M/ST2/00479)

Supermode spatial optical solitons in liquid crystals with competing nonlinearities

We study numerically formation of spatial optical solitons in nematic liquid crystals with competing nonlocal nonlinearities. We demonstrate that at the sufficiently high input power the interplay between focusing and thermally induced defocusing may lead to the formation of two-peak fundamental spatial solitons. These solitons have constant spatial phase and hence represent supermodes of the self-induced extended waveguide structure. We show that these two-peak solitons are stable in propagation and exhibit adiabatic transition to a single peak state under weak absorption.Comment: Paper was submitted to Physical Review

Semi-analytical approach to supermode spatial solitons formation in nematic liquid crystals

We study light propagation in nematic liquid crystals in the context of spatial optical solitons formation. We propose a simple analytical model with multiplicative nonlinearity, which represents (qualitatively) the liquid crystal response by comprising the competition between focusing (reorientational) and defocusing (thermal) nonlocal nonlinearities. We show that at sufficiently high input power the interplay between both nonlinearities leads to the formations of two-peak solitons, which represent supermodes of the self-induced extended waveguide structure. We explain the beam splitting mechanism, discuss threshold effects and conclude that similar phenomena might be present in other media with competing nonlocal nonlinearities