Analysis of stable self-trapping of laser beams in cubic-quintic nonlinear media

Abstract A numerical and analytical analysis of two-dimensional laser beam propagation in cubic-quintic nonlinear optical media demonstrates the existence of stable stationary radially symmetric modes. By means of a variational method, involving super-Gaussian trial functions and Ritz optimization, approximate stationary solutions are obtained, showing very good agreement with numerical results, even in the strongly non-linear, almost saturated, regime. The stability of the stationary modes are verified by analytical analysis and by direct numerical simulations.