Nonlocal surface dipoles and vortices

TL;DR

This paper predicts and analyzes the stability of complex two-dimensional surface solitons, including dipoles and vortices, at nonlocal thermal media interfaces, revealing stable configurations and novel bound states with topological features.

Contribution

It introduces the first known examples of topologically complex surface solitons in nonlocal media, including stable dipoles, vortices, and their bound states, with detailed stability analysis.

Findings

Surface dipoles are stable across the entire existence domain.

Surface vortices exhibit asymmetric distributions and are stable.

Bound vortex states are stable below a certain energy threshold.

Abstract

We predict the existence and address the stability of two-dimensional surface solitons featuring topologically complex shapes, including dipoles, vortices, and bound states of vortex solitons, at the interface of nonlocal thermal media. Unlike their counterparts in bulk media, surface dipoles are found to be stable in the entire existence domain. Surface vortices are found to exhibit strongly asymmetric intensity and phase distributions, and are shown to be stable, too. Bound states of surface vortex solitons belong to a novel class of surface solitons having no counterparts in bulk media. Such states are found to be stable provided that their energy flow does not exceed an upper threshold. Our findings constitute the first known example of topologically complex solitons located at nonlocal two-dimensional interfaces.