Modulational instability and solitons in nonlocal media with competing nonlinearities

We investigate analytically and numerically propagation and spatial localization of light in nonlocal media with competing nonlinearities. In particular, we discuss conditions for the modulational instability of plane waves and formation of spatial solitons. We show that the competing focusing and defocusing nonlinearities enable coexistence of dark or bright spatial solitons in the same medium by varying the intensity of the beam.