Intense light propagating in a nonlinear medium can generate an ensemble of interacting filaments of light, or spatial solitons. Using nematic liquid crystals, we demonstrate that they undergo a collective behavior typical of complex systems, including the formation of clusters and sound-like vibrations, as well as the reduction of the configurational entropy, controlled by the degree of nonlocality of the medium.
We investigate one-dimensional Helmholtz solitons with nonlocal nonlinearity. We show an exact analytical solution to the nonlocal nonlinear nonparaxial propagation equation in the cases of high and weak nonlocality. We also numerically find that the degree of nonlocality can affect the width of nonlocal Helmholtz soliton beams, but have no effect on their stability. Contrarily, nonparaxiality can affect their stability, but have no effect on their width.
We study gray solitons in nonlocal nonlinear media and show that they are stable and can form bound states. We reveal that gray soliton velocity depends on the nonlocality degree, and that it can be drastically reduced in highly nonlocal media. This is in contrast to the case of local media, where the maximal velocity is dictated solely by the asymptotic soliton amplitude.
We predict the existence of surface dark solitons at the interface between a self-defocusing nonlocal nonlinear medium and a linear medium. The fundamental and higher-order surface dark solitons can exist when the linear refractive index of the self-defocusing media is much larger than that of the linear media. The fundamental solitons are stable and the stabilities of higher-order solitons depend on both nonlocality degree and propagation constant.
We reveal that lattice interfaces imprinted in nonlocal nonlinear media support surface solitons that do not exist in other similar settings, including interfaces of local and nonlocal uniform materials. We show the impact of nonlocality on the domains of existence and stability of the surface solitons, focusing on new types of dipole solitons residing partially inside the optical lattice. We find that such solitons feature strongly asymmetric shapes and that they are stable in large parts of their existence domain.
The large phase shift of strongly nonlocal spatial optical soliton(SNSOS) in the (1+1)-dimensional [(1+1)D] lead glass is investigated using the perturbation method. The fundamental soliton solution of the nonlocal nonlinear Schodinger equation(NNLSE) under the second approximation in strongly nonlocal case is obtained. It is found that the phase shift rate along the propagation direction of such soliton is proportional to the degree of nonlocality, which indicates that one can realize Pi-phase-shift within one Rayleigh distance in (1+1)D lead glass. A full comprehension of the nonlocality-enh…
We present the experimental observation of scalar multi-pole solitons in highly nonlocal nonlinear media, including dipole-, tri-pole, quadru-pole, and necklace-type solitons, organized as arrays of out-of-phase bright spots. These complex solitons are meta-stable, but with a large parameters range where the instability is weak, enabling their experimental observation.
We address the evolution of higher-order excited states, such as vortex and multi-hump solitons, in nonlocal media with synthetic, competing focusing and defocusing nonlinearities with different nonlocal transverse scales. We reveal that introduction of suitable competing effects makes possible the stabilization of vortex solitons with topological charge m>2, as well as one-dimensional multi-hump solitons with number of humps p>4, all of which are highly unstable in natural nonlocal materials with focusing nonlinearities.
We show that multipole solitons can be made stable via vectorial coupling in bulk nonlocal nonlinear media. Such vector solitons are composed of mutually incoherent nodeless and multipole components jointly inducing a nonlinear refractive index profile. We found that stabilization of the otherwise highly unstable multipoles occurs below a maximum energy flow. Such threshold is determined by the nonlocality degree.
We analyze the existence, stability, and mobility of gap solitons (GSs) in a periodic photonic structure built into a nonlocal self-defocusing medium. Counter-intuitively, the GSs are supported even by a highly nonlocal nonlinearity, which makes the system quasi-linear. Unlike local models, the variational approximation (VA) predicts the GSs in a good agreement with numerical findings, due to the suppression of undulating tails of the solitons.
We address the impact of asymmetric nonlocal diffusion nonlinearity on the properties of gap solitons supported by photorefractive crystal with an imprinted optical lattice. We reveal how the asymmetric nonlocal response alters the domains of existence and the stability of solitons originating from different gaps. We find that in such media gap solitons cease to exist above a threshold of the nonlocality degree. We discuss how the interplay between nonlocality and lattice strength modifies the gap soliton mobility.
The existence and stability of defect solitons in parity-time (PT) symmetric optical lattices with nonlocal nonlinearity are reported. It is found that nonlocality can expand the stability region of defect solitons. For positive or zero defects, fundamental and dipole solitons can exist stably in the semi-infinite gap and the first gap, respectively. For negative defects, fundamental solitons can be stable in both the semi-infinite gap and the first gap, whereas dipole solitons are unstable in the first gap. There exist a maximum degree of nonlocal nonlinearity, above which the fundamental sol…
The multi-peak solitons and their stability are investigated for the nonlocal nonlinear system with the sine-oscillation response, including both the cases of positive and negative Kerr coefficients. The Hermite-Gaussian-type multi-peak solitons and the ranges of the degree of nonlocality within which the solitons exist are analytically obtained by the variational approach. This is the first time, to our knowledge at least, to discuss the solution existence range of the multi-peak solitons analytically, although approximately. The variational analytical results are confirmed by the numerical o…
The effect of finite boundaries in the propagation of spatial nonlocal solitons in media with cylindrical symmetry is analyzed. Using Ehrenfest's theorem together with the Green's function of the nonlinear refractive index equation, we derive an analytical expression for the force exerted on the soliton by the boundaries, verifying its validity by full numerical propagation. We show that the dynamics of the soliton are determined not only by the degree of nonlocality, but also by the boundary conditions for the refractive index. In particular, we report that a supercritical pitchfork bifurcati…
We put forward a strategy to achieve synthetic nonlinearities where local and nonlocal contributions compete on similar footing, thus yielding intermediate tunable responses ranging from fully local to strongly nonlocal. The physical setting addressed is a semiconductor material with both Kerr and thermal nonlinearities illuminated by a pulse train with suitable single-pulse width and repetition rate. We illustrate the potential of the scheme by showing that it supports soliton properties that are not accessible in either limit of purely local or purely nonlocal media.
We address the stabilization of dipole solitons in nonlocal nonlinear materials by two different approaches. First, we study the properties of such solitons in thermal nonlinear media, where the refractive index landscapes induced by laser beams strongly depend on the boundary conditions and on the sample geometry. We show how the sample geometry impacts the stability of higher-order solitons in thermal nonlinear media and reveal that dipole solitons can be made dynami-cally stable in rectangular geometries in contrast to their counterparts in thermal samples with square cross-section. Second,…
We study effects of nonlocality of the cubic self-focusing nonlinearity on the stability and symmetry-breaking bifurcation (SBB) of solitons in the model of a planar dual-core optical waveg- uide with nonlocal (thermal) nonlinearity. In comparison with the well-known coupled systems with the local nonlinearity, the present setting is affected by the competition of different spatial scales, viz., the coupling length and correlation radius of the nonlocality, $\sqrt{d}$. By means of numer- ical methods and variational approximation (VA, which is relevant for small d), we find that, with the incr…
We develop one numerical method to compute black and gray solitons with Kerr-type nonlocal nonlinearity. As two examples of nonlocal cases, the gray soliton with exponentially decaying nonlocal response or with Gaussian nonlocal response are discussed. For such two nonlocal cases, the analytical form of the tails of nonlocal gray soliton is presented and the analytical relationship for the maximal transverse velocity of nonlocal gray soliton to the characteristic nonlocal length is obtained.
In analogy to a perturbed harmonic oscillator, we calculate the fundamental and some other higher order soliton solutions of the nonlocal nonlinear Schroedinger equation (NNLSE) in the second approximation in the generally nonlocal case. Comparing with numerical simulations we show that soliton solutions in the 2nd approximation can describe the generally nonlocal soliton states of the NNLSE more exactly than that in the zeroth approximation. We show that for the nonlocal case of an exponential-decay type nonlocal response the Gaussian-function-like soliton solutions can't describe the nonloca…
We investigate the breathing of optical spatial solitons in highly nonlocal media. Generalizing the Ehrenfest theorem, we demonstrate that oscillations in beam width obey a fourth-order ordinary differential equation. Moreover, in actual highly nonlocal materials, the original accessible soliton model by Snyder and Mitchell [Science \textbf{276}, 1538 (1997)] cannot accurately describe the dynamics of self-confined beams as the transverse size oscillations have a period which not only depends on power but also on the initial width. Modeling the nonlinear response by a Poisson equation driven b…
We introduce vector soliton complexes in nonlocal Kerr-type nonlinear media. We discover that under proper conditions the combination of nonlocality and vectorial coupling has a remarkable stabilizing action on multi-humped solitons. In particular, we find that stable bound states featuring several field oscillations in each soliton component do exist. This affords stabilization of vector soliton trains incorporating large number of humps, a class of structures known to self-destroy via strong instabilities in scalar settings.
We address spectral tunneling of walking spatial solitons in photorefractive media with nonlocal diffusion of the nonlinear response and an imprinted shallow optical lattice. In contrast to materials with local nonlinearities, where solitons travelling across the lattice close to the Bragg angle suffer large radiative losses, in photorefractive media with diffusion nonlinearity resulting in self-bending solitons survive when their propagation angle approaches and even exceeds the Bragg angle. In the spatial frequency domain this effect can be considered as tunneling through the band of spatial…
We study the transverse instability and dynamics of bright soliton stripes in two-dimensional nonlocal nonlinear media. Using a multiscale perturbation method, we derive analytically the first-order correction to the soliton shape, which features an exponential growth in time -- a signature of the transverse instability. The soliton's characteristic timescale associated with its exponential growth,is found to depend on the square root of the nonlocality parameter. This, in turn, highlights the nonlocality-induced suppression of the transverse instability. Our analytical predictions are corrobo…
We numerically study the nonlocal gap solitons in parity-time (PT) symmetric optical lattices built into a nonlocal self-focusing medium. We state the existence, stability, and propagation dynamics of such PT gap solitons in detail. Simulated results show that there exist stable gap soltions. The influences of the degree of nonlocality on the soliton power, the energy flow density and the stable region of the PT gap solitons are also examined.
We study the formation of dark-bright vector soliton pairs in nonlocal Kerr-type nonlinear medium. We show, by analytical analysis and direct numerical calculation, that in addition to stabilize vector soliton pairs nonlocal nonlinearity also helps to reduce the threshold power for forming a guided bright soliton. With help of the nonlocality, it is expected that the observation of dark-bright vector soliton pairs in experiments becomes more workable.
We develop a general theory of spatial solitons in a liquid crystalline medium exhibiting a nonlinearity with an arbitrary degree of effective nonlocality. The model accounts the observability of "accessible solitons" and establishes an important link with parametric solitons.
It is studied the bright spatial solitons in nonlocal defocusing Kerr media with parity-time (PT) symmetric potentials. We find that these solitons can exist and be stable over a different range of potential parameters. The influence of the degree of nonlocality on the solitons and the transverse energy flow within the stable solitons are also examined.
We study the soliton mobility in nonlocal nonlinear media with an imprinted fading optical lattice. The results show that the transverse mobility of solitons varies with the lattice decay rate and the nonlocality degree, which provides an opportunity for all-optical control of light.
We report on the observation and quantitative assessment of self-trapped pulsating beams in a highly non-local nonlinear regime. The experiments were conducted in nematic liquid crystals and allow a meaningful comparison with the prediction of a scalar theory in the perturbative limit, while addressing the need for beyond-paraxial analytical treatments.
We address the properties of optical solitons in thermal nonlinear media with a local refractive index defect that is capable to trap solitons launched even close to the sample boundary despite the boundary-mediated forces that tend to deflect all beams toward the center of the sample. We show that while such forces become more pronounced with increasing the input beam power the defect can trap only light below a critical power above which solitons are ejected. The dynamics of soliton ejection and the subsequent propagation may be controlled.
We find that a surface soliton in nonlocal nonlinear media can be regarded as a half of a bulk soliton with an antisymmetric amplitude distribution. The analytical solutions for the surface solitons and breathers in strongly nonlocal media are obtained, and the critical power and breather period are gotten analytically and confirmed by numerical simulations. In addition, the oscillating propagation of nonlocal surface solitons launched away from the stationary position is considered as the interaction between the soliton and its out-of-phase image beam. Its trajectory and oscillating period ob…
We analyze the existence, bifurcations, and shape transformations of one-dimensional gap solitons (GSs) in the first finite bandgap induced by a periodic potential built into materials with local self-focusing and nonlocal self-defocusing nonlinearities. Originally stable on-site GS modes become unstable near the upper edge of the bandgap with the introduction of the nonlocal self-defocusing nonlinearity with a small nonlocality radius. Unstable off-site GSs bifurcate into a new branch featuring single-humped, double-humped, and flat-top modes due to the competition between local and nonlocal …
Ring dark and anti-dark solitons in nonlocal media are found. These structures have, respectively, the form of annular dips or humps on top of a stable continuous-wave background, and exist in a weak or strong nonlocality regime, defined by the sign of a characteristic parameter. It is demonstrated analytically that these solitons satisfy an effective cylindrical Kadomtsev-Petviashvilli (aka Johnson's) equation and, as such, can be written explicitly in closed form. Numerical simulations show that they propagate undistorted and undergo quasi-elastic collisions, attesting to their stability pro…
We analyze the transverse instabilities of spatial bright solitons in nonlocal nonlinear media, both analytically and numerically. We demonstrate that the nonlocal nonlinear response leads to a dramatic suppression of the transverse instability of the soliton stripes, and we derive the asymptotic expressions for the instability growth rate in both short- and long-wave approximations.
We demonstrate experimentally that the interactions between a pair of nonlocal spatial optical solitons in a nematic liquid crystal (NLC) can be controlled by the degree of nonlocality. For a given beam width, the degree of nonlocality can be modulated by varying the pretilt angle of NLC molecules via the change of the bias. When the pretilt angle is smaller than pi/4, the nonlocality is strong enough to guarantee the independence of the interactions on the phase difference of the solitons. As the pretilt angle increases, the degree of nonlocality decreases. When the degree is below its critic…
We develop one numerical method to compute the optical vortex soliton with self-defocusing Kerr-type nonlocal nonlinearity. With the numerical simulation method, the propagation and interaction properties of such optical vortex solitons are investigated.
We address the properties of surface-wave solitons on the interface between a semi-infinite homogeneous linear medium and a semi-infinite homogeneous nonlinear nonlocal medium. The stability, energy flow and FWHM of the surface wave solitons can be affected by the degree of nonlocality of the nonlinear medium. We find that the refractive index difference affects the power distribution of the surface solitons in two media. We show that the different boundary values at the interface can lead to the different peak position of the surface solitons, but it can not influence the solitons stability w…
Shortcuts to adiabaticity for rapid soliton compression in nonlocal media
Shanghai University（上海大学）；University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU（巴斯克大学）；Quantum Advanced Research Center (QuARC), CSIC（CSIC量子先进研究中心）；Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Madrid (ICMM), CSIC（CSIC马德里材料科学研究所）
We analyze the existence, stability, and mobility of gap solitons in a periodic photonic structure with nonlocal nonlinearity. Within the Bragg region of band gaps, gap solitons exhibit better stability and higher mobility due to the combinations of non-locality effect and the oscillation nature of Bloch waves. Using linear stability analysis and calculating the Peierls-Nabarro potentials, we demonstrate that gap solitons can revive a non-trivial elastic-like collision even in the periodic systems with the help of nonlocal nonlinearity. Such interesting behaviors of gap solitons in nonlocal no…
Nonlocal quantum fluids emerge as dark-matter models and tools for quantum simulations and technologies. However, strongly nonlinear regimes, like those involving multi-dimensional self-localized solitary waves, are marginally explored for what concerns quantum features. We study the dynamics of 3D+1 solitons in the second-quantized nonlocal nonlinear Schroedinger-Newton equation. We theoretically investigate the quantum diffusion of the soliton center of mass and other parameters, varying the interaction length. 3D+1 simulations of the Ito partial differential equations arising from the posit…
We investigate the propagation of the spatial soliton in cylindrical strongly nonlocal media by a novel method of image beam of light. The effect of the boundary on the soliton acting as the dynamic force for the soliton steering is equivalent to the force between the soliton beam and the image beam. The trajectory of the soliton is analytically studied which is in good agreement with the experimental results.
We consider soliton formation in thermal nonlinear media bounded by rectangular cross-sections and uncover a new class of nonlinear stationary topological state. Specifically, we find that stationary higher-order vortex states in standard shapes do not exist, but rather they take the form of multiple, spatially separated single-charge singularities nested in an elliptical beam. Double-charge states are found to be remarkably robust despite their shape asymmetry and the phase-singularity splitting. States with higher topological charges are found to be unstable.
It is shown that three or more dark/gray solitons can form bound states in nonlocal media. More over dark/gray solitons can form bound states in several balance distances. Numerical simulations indicate that some of such bound states are unstable and will decay into a group of fundamental solitons, while others may be stable. There exist degenerate bound states with the same velocity, Hamiltonian, particle numbers and momentum but decaying in different ways and having different lifetimes.
The existence and stability of defect solitons supported by parity-time (PT) symmetric superlattices with nonlocal nonlinearity are investigated. In the semi-infinite gap, in-phase solitons are found to exist stably for positive or zero defects, but can not exist in the presence of negative defects with strong nonlocality. In the first gap, out-of-phase solitons are stable for positive or zero defects, whereas in-phase solitons are stable for negative defects. The dependence of soliton stabilities on modulation depth of the PT potentials is studied. It is interesting that solitons can exist st…
We question physical existence of shape invariant solitons in three dimensional nematic liquid crystals. Using modified Petviashvili's method for finding eigenvalues and eigenfunctions, we determine shape invariant solitons in a realistic physical model that includes the highly nonlocal nature of the liquid crystal system. We check the stability of such solutions by propagating them for long distances. We establish that any noise added to the medium or to the fundamental solitons induces them to breathe, rendering them practically unobservable.
In this work we characterize the dynamical instabilities of localized structures exhibited by a recently introduced Gelens et al., Phys. Rev. A 75, 063812 2007 generalization of the Lugiato-Lefever model that includes a weakly nonlocal response of an intracavity metamaterial. A rich scenario, in which the localized structures exhibit different types of oscillatory instabilities, tristability, and excitability, including a regime of conditional excitability in which the system is bistable, is presented and discussed. Finally, it is shown that the scenario is organized by a pair of Takens-Bogdan…
In a recent paper [A. Alberucci, C. Jisha, N. Smyth, and G. Assanto, Phys. Rev. A 91, 013841 (2015)], Alberucci et al. have studied the propagation of bright spatial solitary waves in highly nonlocal media. We find that the main results in that and related papers, concerning soliton shape and dynamics, based on the accessible soliton (AS) approximation, are incorrect; the correct results have already been published by others. These and other inconsistencies in the paper follow from the problems in applying the AS approximation in earlier papers by the group that propagated to the later papers.…
A novel phenomenon is discovered that the short-range interaction between strongly nonlocal spatial solitons depends sinusoidally on their phase difference. The two neighbouring solitons at close proximate can be inter-trapped via the strong nonlocality, and propagate together as a whole. The trajectory of the propagation is a straight line with its slope controlled by the phase difference. The experimental results carried out in nematic liquid crystals agree quantitatively with the prediction. Our study suggests that the phenomenon to steer optical beams by controlling the phase difference co…
We predict the existence and address the stability of two-dimensional surface solitons featuring topologically complex shapes, including dipoles, vortices, and bound states of vortex solitons, at the interface of nonlocal thermal media. Unlike their counterparts in bulk media, surface dipoles are found to be stable in the entire existence domain. Surface vortices are found to exhibit strongly asymmetric intensity and phase distributions, and are shown to be stable, too. Bound states of surface vortex solitons belong to a novel class of surface solitons having no counterparts in bulk media. Suc…
We consider the impact of anisotropic nonlocality on the arrest of the collapse and stabilization of dipole-mode (DM) solitons in two-dimensional (2D) models of optical media with the diffusive nonlinearity. The nonlocal nonlinearity is made anisotropic through elliptic diffusivity. The medium becomes semi-local in the limit case of 1D diffusivity. Families of fundamental and DM solitons are found by means of the variational approximation (VA) and in a numerical form. We demonstrate that the collapse of 2D beams is arrested even in the semi-local system. The anisotropic nonlocality readily sta…
We consider the interplay between nonlocal nonlinearity and randomness for two different nonlinear Schrödinger models. We show that stability of bright solitons in presence of random perturbations increases dramatically with the nonlocality-induced finite correlation length of the noise in the transverse plane, by means of both numerical simulations and analytical estimates. In fact, solitons are practically insensitive to noise when the correlation length of the noise becomes comparable to the extent of the wave packet. We characterize soliton stability using two different criteria based on t…
Quantum reflection refers to a non-vanishing reflection probability in the absence of a classically turning point. Much attention has been paid to such reflections due to their fundamental, intriguing physics and potential practical applications. Here we propose a scheme to realize a quantum reflection of nonlocal nonlinear optical beams in a cold Rydberg atomic gas via electromagnetically induced transparency working in a dispersion regime. Based on the long-range interaction between Rydberg atoms, we found that the system supports low-power nonlocal optical solitons. Such nonlocal solitons c…
We study soliton pulse compression in materials with cascaded quadratic nonlinearities, and show that the group-velocity mismatch creates two different temporally nonlocal regimes. They correspond to what is known as the stationary and nonstationary regimes. The theory accurately predicts the transition to the stationary regime, where highly efficient pulse compression is possible.
We consider the problem of reflectionless propagation of PT-symmetric solitons described by the nonlocal nonlinear Schroedinger equation on a line in the framework of the concept of transparent boundary conditions for evolution equations. Transparent boundary conditions for the nonlocal nonlinear Schroedinger equation are derived. The absence of backscattering at the artificial boundaries is confirmed by the numerical implementation of the transparent boundary conditions.
Experimental data of femtosecond thick-crystal second-harmonic generation shows that when tuning away from phase matching, a dominating narrow spectral peak appears in the second harmonic that can be tuned over 100's of nm by changing the phase-mismatch parameter. Traditional theory explains this as phase matching between a sideband in the broadband pump to its second-harmonic. However, our experiment is conducted under high input intensities and instead shows excellent quantitative agreement with a nonlocal theory describing cascaded quadratic nonlinearities. This theory explains the detuned …
An perturbation-iteration method is developed for the computation of the Hermite-Gaussian-like solitons with arbitrary peak numbers in nonlocal nonlinear media. This method is based on the perturbed model of the Schrödinger equation for the harmonic oscillator, in which the minimum perturbation is obtained by the iteration. This method takes a few tens of iteration loops to achieve enough high accuracy, and the initial condition is fixed to the Hermite-Gaussian function. The method we developed might also be extended to the numerical integration of the Schrödinger equations in any type of pote…
This is a review addressing soliton-like states in systems with nonlocal nonlinearity. The work on this topic has long history. Some findings, such as optical solitons supported by thermal nonlinearity, and by the orientational nonlinearity in liquid crystals, have been reviewed in the literature, therefore they are outlined in the present review in a brief form. Some other studies, such as those addressing models with fractional diffraction, which is represented by a linear nonlocal operator, have started recently, therefore it will be relevant to review them in detail when more results are a…
Asymptotic reductions of a defocusing nonlocal nonlinear Schrödinger model in $(3+1)$-dimensions, in both Cartesian and cylindrical geometry, are presented. First, at an intermediate stage, a Boussinesq equation is derived, and then its far-field, in the form of a variety of Kadomtsev-Petviashvilli (KP) equations for right- and left-going waves, is found. KP models include versions of the KP-I and KP-II equations, in Cartesian and cylindrical geometry. Solitary waves solutions, planar or ring-shaped, and of dark or anti-dark type, are also predicted to occur. Their nature and stability is dete…
We demonstrate the existence of two species of stable bright solitons, fundamental and dipole ones, in one-dimensional self-defocusing nonlocal media, with the local value of nonlinearity coefficient having one or several minima and growing at any rate faster than |x| at large values of coordinate x. The model can be derived for a slab optical waveguide with thermal nonlinearity. The most essential difference from the local counterpart of this system is the competition between two different spatial scales, the one determining the modulation pattern of the nonlinearity coefficient, and the corr…
