Perturbed fundamental solitons in nonlocal uniaxial nematic liquid crystals

We generate perturbed fundamental solitons in three dimensional highly nonlocal uniaxial nematic liquid crystals in the presence of an externally applied bias voltage, by launching specific Gaussian beams into the liquid crystal cell. In general, launching Gaussians leads to their dispersal for low intensities and small widths, and to their instabilities for high intensities and large widths. Localized solutions in the form of well defined breathing solitons are observed only for the well defined values of the input beam intensity and width, which can be determined by a variational technique. In this case, the oscillating Gaussian beam characteristics are close to the perturbed breathing fundamental soliton solutions, with the characteristics well-predicted by the variational calculation.