"Capillary'' structures in transversely trapped nonlinear optical beams

Abstract

A mathematical analogy between paraxial optics with two circular polarizations of light in a defocusing Kerr medium with positive dispersion, binary Bose-Einstein condensates of cold atoms in the phase separation regime, and hydrodynamics of two immiscible compressible liquids can help in theoretical search for unknown three-dimensional coherent optical structures. In this work, transversely trapped (by a smooth profile of the refractive index) light beams are considered and new numerical examples are presented, including a ``floating drop'', a precessing longitudinal optical vortex with an inhomogeneous profile of filling with the second component, and the combination of a drop and a vortex filament. Filled vortices that are perpendicular to the beam axis and propagate at large distances have also been simulated. V. P. Ruban, JETP Lett. 117(4), 292 (2023); DOI: 10.1134/S0021364022603311