title: Self-accelerating optical beams in highly nonlocal nonlinear media.
abstract: We find self-accelerating beams in highly nonlocal nonlinear optical media, and show that their propagation dynamics is strongly affected by boundary conditions. Specifically for the thermal optical nonlinearity, the boundary conditions have a strong impact on the beam trajectory: they can increase the acceleration during propagation, or even cause beam bending in a direction opposite to the initial trajectory. Under strong self-focusing, the accelerating beam decomposes into a localized self-trapped beam propagating on an oscillatory trajectory and a second beam which accelerates in a different direction. We augment this study by investigating the effects caused by a finite aperture and by a nonlinear range of a finite extent.
authors: Physics Department and Solid State Institute, Technion, 32000 Haifa, Israel.
authors: Rivka
authors: R
authors: Bekenstein
authors: Mordechai
authors: M
authors: Segev
mesh_terms: D000054:Acceleration; D003198:Computer Simulation; D008027:Light; D008420:Manufactured Materials; D009391:Nephelometry and Turbidimetry / Q000379:methods*; D017711:Nonlinear Dynamics; D012031:Refractometry / Q000379:methods*; D012542:Scattering, Radiation; D013696:Temperature