Abstract

Nematicons, i.e., optical spatial solitons in nematic liquid crystals (NLC), have been attracting a great deal of attention due to their unique properties such as, for example, excitability at powers of a few hundred µW and the possibility to be electrically and/or optically (by other light beams) bent.[1] In this work we investigate, both experimentally and theoretically, the nematicon behavior for different degrees of nonlinearity, discussing how the latter affects the beam width (self-focusing) and trajectory (self-steering). Having defined the angle between the molecular director $\widehat{n}$ (i.e., the local optic axis) and the beam wavevector $k=n_0{k}_0\widehat{z}$ (k₀ is the vacuum wavenumber, n₀ the linear refractive index), the propagation of the extraordinary wave in the plane yz in a homogeneous NLC cell of thickness L across x is ruled by the equivalent 2D model [2,3]

© 2011 Optical Society of America