Gaetano Assanto

University of Rome 3, Italy

“Spatial optical solitons in nematic liquid crystals: en-route to photonics”

Abstract:

We present an overview of the main features of nematicons, optical spatial solitons governed by  reorientation in nematic liquid crystals. Based on their guiding properties and nonlocality, nematicons exhibit a number of intriguing effects in nonlinear optics with potential applications in photonics, including long-range attraction, controlled refraction and reflection, cavity-less bistability, guided-wave devices, soliton-assisted random lasing.