Soliton aided propagation and routing of vortex beams in nonlocal media

Two-dimensional optical vortex beams can propagate stably and undergo bending in nonlocal media with the aid
of a spatial soliton, the latter preventing their destabilization and breakup. By colaunching a suitable pair of collinear
soliton and vortex beams in nematic liquid crystals, we conduct a series of numerical experiments to demonstrate
that the vortex beam can be made to propagate in the nematicon waveguide and follow its trajectory, even in the
cases of refraction and total internal reflection at a dielectric interface. Modulation theory supports these findings and
provides an excellent theoretical framework.