Bistable solitons in colloidal media

Abstract

We study nonlinear light propagation in colloidal suspensions of dielectric nanoparticles within the hard-sphere interaction approximation. We analyze the existence and properties of self-trapped beams (spatial optical solitons) in such media and demonstrate the existence of a bistability regime in the one-dimensional case. We find however that the lower stable branch disappears in the two-dimensional model.

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