Interplay between diffractive radiation shed and damping coefficient on nematicon propagation

Abstract

This study considers the propagation of spatial soliton in nematic liquid crystals in the presence of damping in the nonlocal regime. The importance of diffractive radiation shed for an undisturbed propagation of nematicon has been analysed in this paper using variational and numerical methods. When the damping coefficient is constant, a large value of diffractive radiation height is required to counteract the effect of damping. If the damping coefficient varies with the propagation distance, the diffractive radiation has an important role in reducing the damping effect. In the case of the periodic damping profile, even larger diffractive radiation is needed to overcome the effect of damping as compared to the constant damping profiles. But a low value of diffractive radiation is enough to overcome the hyperbolic damping.