Propagation, Interaction, and Instabilities of Optical Vortices in Resonant Media

Abstract

The features of propagation and interaction phenomena for singular light beams in resonant media have been analyzed theoretically and numerically. The influence of self-focusing and defocusing processes on the characteristics of optical vortices with di˙erent topological structure has been studied. The parameters for spatially localized structures in the form of dark vortex solitons have been characterized. The conditions for modulational instability of transverse structure of optical vortices have been determined and various scenarios of vortices break-up have been found numerically. The peculiarities of two- and three-vortices interaction have been discussed both for focusing and defocusing types of nonlinearity.