Abstract

The formation of the optical vortex soliton (OVS) has been demonstrated, starting with numerical inquiries, experiments and analysis.¹ The potential to control one beam of light with another has been a driving force in the field of nonlinear optics since the earliest days, with the OVS effect being among the latest techniques allowing such applications. Linear vortices are already known to play a fundamental role in the scattering of radiation and in waveguides, where the vortex is characterized by the separable function of the azimuthal coordinate φ: exp(iΜΦ), where M = ±1, ±2, … is the so-called topological charge. In these linear systems, three modes often arise from symmetry: transverse-electric (TE), transverse-magnetic (TM), and circular (HE).

© 1994 Optical Society of America