Optical vortices in nonlinear media: Spirals, forks, and knots

Author

Desyatnikov, Anton S.

Author_Institution

Nonlinear Phys. Centre, Australian Nat. Univ., Canberra, ACT, Australia

fYear

2011

fDate

6-8 Sept. 2011

Firstpage

1

Lastpage

3

Abstract

A summary is presented of recent theoretical and experimental results on the dynamics of optical vortices embedded in laser beams propagating in self-focusing nonlinear media. I discuss the spiraling of vortices in nonlocal solitons and elliptic laser beams as well as the pitchfork topological reactions of vortices observed recently in experiments with vortex beams in nematic liquid crystals. Several examples of more exotic structures are presented, such as vortex links and knots, forming spontaneously and under the action of soliton internal modes.

Keywords

laser beams; light propagation; nematic liquid crystals; optical self-focusing; optical solitons; optical vortices; elliptic laser beams; exotic structures; laser beam propagation; nematic liquid crystals; nonlocal solitons; optical vortices; pitchfork topological reactions; self-focusing nonlinear media; soliton internal modes; vortex knots; vortex links; vortex spiraling; Laser beams; Media; Optical beams; Optical vortices; Optimized production technology; Solitons;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Nonlinear Photonics (NLP), 2011 International Workshop

Conference_Location

Kharkov

Print_ISBN

978-1-4577-0477-2

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/NLP.2011.6102652

Filename

6102652