Publication
Scattering of dipole-mode vector solitons: Theory and experiment
W. Krolikowski, G. McCarthy, Y.S. Kivshar, C. Weilnau, C. Denz, J.J. García-Ripoll, V.M. Pérez-García
Physical Review E, 68, 016612 (2003).
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MOLAB authors
Pérez García, Victor M.. 
Abstract
We study, both theoretically and experimentally, the scattering properties of optical dipole-mode vector solitons—radially asymmetric composite self-trapped optical beams. First, we analyze the soliton collisions in an isotropic two-component model with a saturable nonlinearity, and demonstrate that in many cases the scattering dynamics of the dipole-mode solitons allows us to classify them as “molecules of light”—extremely robust spatially localized objects which survive a wide range of interactions and display many properties of composite states with a rotational degree of freedom. Next, we study the composite solitons in an anisotropic nonlinear model that describes photorefractive nonlinearities, and also present a number of experimental verifications of our analysis.