Nematicon-nematicon interactions in a medium with tunable nonlinearity and fixed nonlocality

M. Kwasny, A. Piccardi, A. Alberucci, M. Peccianti, M. Kaczmarek, M. Karpierz and G. Assanto

Opt. Lett. 36 (13), 2566-8 (2011)

Abstract:

We investigate the attractive interaction between spatial solitons in nematic liquid crystals with a tunable nonlinearity and a constant nonlocality.The experimental study, carried out by controlling the orientation of the optic axis via the electro-optic response,shows how the interactions depend on reorientation, in excellent agreement with a model accounting for the anisotropic nature of the dielectric.