Enhanced soliton interactions by inhomogeneous nonlocality and nonlinearity

We address the interactions between optical solitons in the system with longitudinally varying nonlocality degree and nonlinearity strength. We consider a physical model describing light propagation in nematic liquid crystals featuring a strongly nonlocal nonlinear response. We reveal that the variation of the nonlocality and nonlinearity along the propagation direction can substantially enhance or weaken the interaction between out-of-phase solitons. This phenomenon manifests itself as a slowdown or acceleration of the soliton collision dynamics in one-dimensional geometries or of the soliton spiraling rate in bulk media. Therefore, one finds that by engineering the nonlocality and nonlinearity variation rate one can control the output soliton location.Comment: 22 pages, 5 figures, to appear in Physical Review

Route to nonlocality and observation of accessible solitons

We develop a general theory of spatial solitons in a liquid crystalline medium exhibiting a nonlinearity with an arbitrary degree of effective nonlocality. The model accounts the observability of "accessible solitons" and establishes an important link with parametric solitons.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

Lattice-supported surface solitons in nonlocal nonlinear media

We reveal that lattice interfaces imprinted in nonlocal nonlinear media support surface solitons that do not exist in other similar settings, including interfaces of local and nonlocal uniform materials. We show the impact of nonlocality on the domains of existence and stability of the surface solitons, focusing on new types of dipole solitons residing partially inside the optical lattice. We find that such solitons feature strongly asymmetric shapes and that they are stable in large parts of their existence domain.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figures, to appear in Optics Letter

Upper threshold for stability of multipole-mode solitons in nonlocal nonlinear media

We address the stability of multipole-mode solitons in nonlocal Kerr-type nonlinear media. Such solitons comprise several out-of-phase peaks packed together by the forces acting between them. We discover that dipole-, triple-, and quadrupole-mode solitons can be made stable, whereas all higher-order soliton bound states are unstable.Comment: 15 pages, 4 figures, To appear in Optics Letter

Soliton mobility in nonlocal optical lattices

We address the impact of nonlocality in the physical features exhibited by solitons supported by Kerr-type nonlinear media with an imprinted optical lattice. We discover that nonlocality of nonlinear response can profoundly affect the soliton mobility, hence all the related phenomena. Such behavior manifests itself in significant reductions of the Peierls-Nabarro potential with increase of the degree of nonlocality, a result that opens the rare possibility in nature of almost radiationless propagation of highly localized solitons across the lattice.Comment: 16 pages, 4 figure

Two dimensional modulational instability in photorefractive media

We study theoretically and experimentally the modulational instability of broad optical beams in photorefractive nonlinear media. We demonstrate the impact of the anisotropy of the nonlinearity on the growth rate of periodic perturbations. Our findings are confirmed by experimental measurements in a strontium barium niobate photorefractive crystal.Comment: 8 figure

Nonlinear management of the angular momentum of soliton clusters

We demonstrate an original approach to acquire nonlinear control over the angular momentum of a cluster of solitary waves. Our model, derived from a general description of nonlinear energy propagation in dispersive media, shows that the cluster angular momentum can be adjusted by acting on the global energy input into the system. The phenomenon is experimentally verified in liquid crystals by observing power-dependent rotation of a two-soliton cluster.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Multipole vector solitons in nonlocal nonlinear media

We show that multipole solitons can be made stable via vectorial coupling in bulk nonlocal nonlinear media. Such vector solitons are composed of mutually incoherent nodeless and multipole components jointly inducing a nonlinear refractive index profile. We found that stabilization of the otherwise highly unstable multipoles occurs below a maximum energy flow. Such threshold is determined by the nonlocality degree.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figures, to appear in Optics Letter

Observation of optical spatial solitons in a highly nonlocal medium

We report on the observation and quantitative assessment of self-trapped pulsating beams in a highly non-local nonlinear regime. The experiments were conducted in nematic liquid crystals and allow a meaningful comparison with the prediction of a scalar theory in the perturbative limit, while addressing the need for beyond-paraxial analytical treatments.Comment: 16 pages, 3 figure