title: Nematic liquid crystals: a suitable medium for self-confinement of coherent and incoherent light.
abstract: 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.
authors.affiliation: National Institute for the Physics of Matter & Department of Electronic Engineering, Terza University of Rome, Via della Vasca Navale 84, 00146 Rome, Italy.
authors.forename: Marco
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Peccianti
authors.forename: Gaetano
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Assanto