Abstract

The study of nonlinear effects in nonlocal optical media attracts a growing interest because of the unique ability of such media to stabilize higher-order spatial solitons carrying an orbital angular momentum [1]. In particular, dipole, tripole, and quadrupole solitons, as well as necklace beams have been generated experimentally in lead glasses [2]. The nontrivial patterns composed of fundamental solitons become possible due to a balance between repulsion of out-of-phase individual solitons and a force from a broad effective potential induced by the beam. Another approach to understand these structures is to employ an analogy with linear modes: “soliton necklaces” can be related to the Laguerre-Gaussian modes, while “soliton matrices” resemble the Hermite-Gaussian beams [1].

© 2007 IEEE