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 (i.e., the local optic axis) and the beam wavevector (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
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