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An experimental and numerical investigation of the dynamical, time-dependent effects accompanying the formation and interaction of two-dimensional spatial screening solitons in a photorefractive strontium barium niobate crystal is performed. These effects include initial diffraction, collapse to the soliton shape, the oscillation of beam diameters, beam bending, and the rotation, twisting, and turning of soliton pairs. The dynamics of complex spiraling of two incoherent solitons is considered in more detail.

We investigate theoretically properties of partially coherent solitons in optical nonlinear media with slow saturable nonlinearity. We have found numerically that such a medium can support spatial solitons which are asymmetric in shape and are composed of only a finite number of modes associated with the self-induced waveguide. It is shown that these asymmetric spatial solitons can propagate many diffraction lengths without changes, but that collisions change their shape and may split them apart.

We carry out a theoretical investigation of the properties of partially coherent solitons for media which have a slow Kerr-like nonlinearity. We find exact solutions of the Nth-order Manakov equations in a general form. These describe partially coherent solitons (PCSs) and their collisions. In fact, the exact solutions allow us to analyze important properties of PCSs such as stationary profiles of the spatial beams and effects resulting from their collisions. In particular, we find, analytically, the number of parameters that control the soliton shape. We present profiles which are symmetric as well as those which are asymmetric. We also find that collisions allow the profiles to remain stationary but cause their shapes to change.