Nonlinear interaction of two crossing beams in chiral nematic liquid crystals

Spatial soliton are self-trapped light beams where diffraction is counterbalanced by optical nonlinearity. Since spatial optical soliton induce waveguides into the nonlinear medium they can be used for all optical switching and signal processing. Moreover, they can form reconfigurable guiding channels which can guide other optical beams [1]. An important characteristic of many nonlinear media, which is known to strongly affect the propagation of beams through the medium. It tends to improve the stability of soliton and also allows to observe nematicon interaction. In this work, we present the soliton interaction and crossing in geometries where two solitons propagate perpendicular to each other. As an experimental platform we utilize chiral nematic liquid crystals (NLCs) which belong to one of the most prominent representatives of the soft matter demonstrate a rich variety of strong nonlinear phenomena [2-4]. Since NLCs allow soliton propagation at the moderate power level and offer high tunability and strong nonlocality they can be employed for an active control of optical properties [5].