Self-accelerating optical beams in highly nonlocal nonlinear media

We find self-accelerating beams in highly nonlocal nonlinear optical media, and show that their propagation dynamics is strongly affected by boundary conditions. Specifically for the thermal optical nonlinearity, the boundary conditions have a strong impact on the beam trajectory: they can increase the acceleration during propagation, or even cause beam bending in a direction opposite to the initial trajectory. Under strong self-focusing, the accelerating beam decomposes into a localized self-trapped beam propagating on an oscillatory trajectory and a second beam which accelerates in a different direction. We augment this study by investigating the effects caused by a finite aperture and by a nonlinear range of a finite extent. (C) 2011 Optical Society of America