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Extraordinary-wave nematicons can be launched and steered in angle by acting on the applied voltage. In specifically designed glass cells for planarly aligned nematic liquid crystals, their direction of propagation can be externally-controlled over angles as large as seven degrees.

The study of optical spatial solitons in nematic liquid crystals (NLC) has greatly improved the understanding of light localization in reorientational nonlocal media. We report some of the latest progress with reference to bright and dark solitary waves in NLC, bright and dark nematicons, discussing models and methods for their description and simulation. We give an account of exact and approximate solutions, as well as nematicon bistability.

The existence and stability of 𝒫𝒯-symmetric gap solitons in a periodic structure with defocusing nonlocal nonlinearity are studied. It is found that solitons are in general unstable, their instability rate depending on the magnitude of the imaginary potential. For low values of the imaginary potential solitons survive over distances many times the Rayleigh distance, whereas for high values of the imaginary potential solitons develop an oscillatory instability, eventually leading to a transverse drift towards the gain region.