Nematic liquid crystals: a suitable medium for self-confinement of coherent and incoherent light.
Nematic liquid crystals exhibit a saturable, non-instantaneous nonlinear response through light-induced reorientation. In such a material, we demonstrate that (2+1)-dimensional spatial solitary waves can be generated at milliwatt power levels not only with a coherent optical beam, but also with incoherent excitations. Self-trapping also allows the efficient guidance of a weak co-polarized probe.
Peccianti
Marco
M
National Institute for the Physics of Matter & Department of Electronic Engineering, Terza University of Rome, Via della Vasca Navale 84, 00146 Rome, Italy.
Assanto
Gaetano
G