Vortex stabilization by means of spatial solitons in nonlocal media

We investigate how optical vortices, which tend to be azimuthally unstable in local nonlinear materials, can be stabilized by a copropagating coaxial spatial solitary wave in nonlocal, nonlinear media. We focus on the formation of nonlinear vortex-soliton vector beams in reorientational soft matter, namely nematic liquid crystals, and report on experimental results, as well as numerical simulations.