Self-trapping of bright rings

Generation and nonlinear self-trapping of optical propelling beams

We generate optical beams with rotating intensity blades by employing the moiré technique. We show that the number of the blades and the speed and direction of rotation can be controlled at ease with a spatial light modulator, while no mechanical movement or phase-sensitive interference is involved. By applying a noninstantaneous self-focusing nonlinearity, we demonstrate both theoretically and experimentally self-trapping of such optical propelling beams.

Symmetry-breaking instabilities of generalized elliptical solitons

Elliptical solitons in 2D nonlinear Schödinger equations are studied numerically with a more-generalized formulation. New families of solitons, vortices, and soliton rings with elliptical symmetry are found and investigated. With a suitable symmetry-breaking parameter, we show that perturbed elliptical solitons tend to move transversely owing to the existences of dipole excitation modes, which are totally suppressed in circularly symmetric solitons. Furthermore, by numerical evolutions we demonstrate that elliptical vortices and soliton rings collapse into a pair of stripes and clusters, respectively, revealing the experimental observations in the literature.

Solitons in nonlinear media with an infinite range of nonlocality: first observation of coherent elliptic solitons and of vortex-ring solitons

We present an experimental study on wave propagation in highly nonlocal optically nonlinear media, for which far-away boundary conditions significantly affect the evolution of localized beams. As an example, we set the boundary conditions to be anisotropic and demonstrate the first experimental observation of coherent elliptic solitons. Furthermore, exploiting the natural ability of such nonlinearities to eliminate azimuthal instabilities, we perform the first observation of stable vortex-ring solitons. These features of highly nonlocal nonlinearities affected by far-away boundary conditions open new directions in nonlinear science by facilitating remote control over soliton propagation.

Observation of vortex-ring "discrete" solitons in 2D photonic lattices

We present the experimental observation of both on-site and off-site vortex-ring solitons of unity topological charge in a nonlinear photonic lattice, along with a theoretical study of their propagation dynamics and stability.

Partially incoherent optical vortices in self-focusing nonlinear media

We observe stable propagation of spatially localized single- and double-charge optical vortices in a self-focusing nonlinear medium. The vortices are created by self-trapping of partially incoherent light carrying a phase dislocation, and they are stabilized when the spatial incoherence of light exceeds a certain threshold. We confirm the vortex stabilization effect by numerical simulations and also show that the similar mechanism of stabilization applies to higher-order vortices.