Stable optical vortices in self-focusing nonlinear media

Abstract

We analyze two different physical mechanisms that can stabilize optical vortices in self-focusing nonlinear media which are known to be unstable due to the azimuthal modulational instability. First, we show that vortices become stable in self-focusing nonlinear media with nonlocal nonlinearity. Second, we study optical vortices created by self-trapping of partially incoherent light with a phase dislocation and show that such partially incoherent optical vortices are stabilized when the spatial incoherence of light exceeds a certain threshold value. Show more