Chaoticons in nonlocal thermal nonlinear media

Chaotic self-trapped optical beams in strongly nonlocal nonlinear media, termed chaoticons, were first predicted in a system with exponential-decay response [Sci. Rep. 7, 41438 (2017)]. We report here that such a chaoticon is also a robust phenomenon in lead glass with nonlocal thermal nonlinearity. First, it is shown that the initial inputs of unstable multi-humped stationary solutions will evolve into chaoticons. Then, the general existence of the chaoticons is presented since any initial inputs with a random transverse profile and arbitrary power will turn into chaoticons. The positive Lyapunov exponent and spatial decoherence denote the chaotic behavior, while the invariance of the beam width during the evolution and the quasi-elastic collision during the interaction demonstrate the soliton-like properties of the self-trapped beams. (C) 2019 Optical Society of America