Steady-state vortex-screening solitons formed in biased photorefractive media.
We report the observation of steady-state photorefractive vortex-screening solitons. As a singly charged circular vortex nested on a broad beam propagates through a biased strontium barium niobate crystal, it self-traps in both transverse dimensions despite the inherent anisotropy of the photorefractive nonlinearity. When the vortex beam is a doughnut-shaped narrow beam, it breaks up into two elongated slices (with a self-defocusing nonlinearity) or into two focused filaments (with a self-focusing nonlinearity). We demonstrate the optical guidance of a probe beam in a circular waveguide induced by the self-trapped vortex.
Chen
Z
Z
Shih
M F
MF
Segev
M
M
Wilson
D W
DW
Muller
R E
RE
Maker
P D
PD