Vector nematicons: Coupled spatial solitons in nematic liquid crystals

Abstract

Families of soliton pairs, namely vector solitons, are found within the context of a coupled nonlocal nonlinear Schr\odinger system of equations, as appropriate for modeling beam propagation in nematic liquid crystals. In the focusing case, bright soliton pairs have been found to exist provided their amplitudes satisfy a specific condition. In our analytical approach, focused on the defocusing regime, we rely on a multiscale expansion methods, which reveals the existence of dark-dark and antidark-antidark solitons, obeying an effective Korteweg-de Vries equation, as well as dark-bright solitons, obeying an effective Mel'nikov system. These pairs are discriminated by the sign of a constant that links all physical parameters of the system to the amplitude of the stable continuous wave solutions, and, much like the focusing case, the solitons' amplitudes are linked, leading to mutual guiding.