Modulational instability of optically induced nematicon propagation

We report the modulational instability （MI） analysis for the modulation equations governing the propagation of coherent polarized light through a nematic liquid crystal （NLC） slab, in the limit of low light intensity and local material response. The linear stability analysis of the nonlinear plane wave solutions is performed by considering both the wave vectors （k,l） of the basic states and wave vectors （K,L） of the perturbations as free parameters. We compute the MI gain, and the MI gain peak is reduced and the stable bandwidth is widened with the increase of the strength of the applied electric field. Further, we invoke the extended homogeneous balance method and Exp-function method aided with symbolic computation and obtain a series of periodic solitonic humps of nematicon profiles admitting the propagation of laser light in the NLC medium.