Supermode spatial optical solitons in liquid crystals with competing nonlinearities

We study numerically the formation of spatial optical solitons in nematic liquid crystals with competing nonlocal nonlinearities. We demonstrate that at a sufficiently high input power the interplay between focusing and thermally induced defocusing may lead to the formation of two-peak fundamental spatial solitons. These solitons have a constant spatial phase and hence represent supermodes of the self-induced extended waveguide structure. We show that these two-peak solitons are stable in propagation and exhibit an adiabatic transition to a single-peak state under weak absorption. © 2017 American Physical Society.