Self-accelerating optical beams in highly nonlocal nonlinear media

Rivka Bekenstein*, Mordechai Segev

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

90 Scopus citations

Abstract

We find self-accelerating beams in highly nonlocal nonlinear optical media, and show that their propagation dynamics is strongly affected by boundary conditions. Specifically for the thermal optical nonlinearity, the boundary conditions have a strong impact on the beam trajectory: they can increase the acceleration during propagation, or even cause beam bending in a direction opposite to the initial trajectory. Under strong selffocusing, the accelerating beam decomposes into a localized self-trapped beam propagating on an oscillatory trajectory and a second beam which accelerates in a different direction. We augment this study by investigating the effects caused by a finite aperture and by a nonlinear range of a finite extent.

Original languageAmerican English
Pages (from-to)23706-23715
Number of pages10
JournalOptics Express
Volume19
Issue number24
DOIs
StatePublished - 21 Nov 2011
Externally publishedYes

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