Spatial soliton steering induced by weak nonlocality in optical lattices

We investigate the soliton steering in weakly nonlocal nonlinear media with harmonic modulation of the refractive index. It is shown that the weak nonlocality originated from the nonlocal nonlinear response of medium induces a transverse modulation of the refractive index, which leads to the occurrence of interplay between the weak nonlocality-induced transverse modulation and the harmonic modulation. Thus, one can control the soliton steering in weakly nonlocal medium, such as nematic liquid crystal, by employing the competition between the weak nonlocality parameter and the lattice depth.