An experimental observation of a spatial optical soliton beam and self splitting of beam into two soliton beams in chiral nematic liquid crystal

Abstract

In this paper, the torque, reorientation and the change in angular momentum of the light are firstly discussed. And moreover, the propagation of light beam (optical spatial soliton beam) at the distance of a few millimeters in chiral nematic liquid crystal (CNLC) will be experimentally under study. In spite of the complex structure of these crystals, due to a self-focusing effect, by injection of infrared laser beam with a power of the order of a few tenths of milliwatts into CNLC an optical spatial soliton beam is observed. In addition, we experimentally obtain the formation of splitting of a soliton beam into two soliton beams which have equal powers due to a saturation of the reorientational nonlinearity. As a matter of fact, this saturation of the reorientational nonlinearity can occur at one point of CNLC, due to the nonlocal nonlinearity. Hence this saturation of the reorientation nonlinearity can split one soliton beam to two soliton beams. This splitting can have a great potential interest for applications in all-optical signal processing, reconfigurable optical interconnects and switching.