Incoherent interaction of nematicons in bias-free liquid-crystal cells

Y. V. Izdebskaya; V. Shvedov; A. Desyatnikov; W. Krolikowski; G. Assanto; Y. Kivshar

doi:10.2971/jeos.2010.10008

Journal of the European Optical Society - Rapid publications, Vol 5 (2010)

Incoherent interaction of nematicons in bias-free liquid-crystal cells

Y. V. Izdebskaya, V. Shvedov, A. Desyatnikov, W. Krolikowski, G. Assanto, Y. Kivshar

Abstract

We study experimentally the propagation dynamics and interaction of a pair of mutually incoherent nematicons: spatial optical solitons in nematic liquid crystals. In contrast to earlier studies, we consider a bias-free liquid-crystal cell and compare the soliton interaction in copropagating and counterpropagating geometries. We analyze the dependence of nematicon interaction on input power and observe a direct manifestation of a long-range nonlocal nonlinearity. Attraction of counterpropagating solitons requires higher powers and longer relaxation times than that of copropagating nematicons due to losses-induced power asymmetry of counterpropagating nematicons.

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