Observation of optical spatial solitons in a highly nonlocal medium
  We report on the observation and quantitative assessment of self-trapped pulsating beams in a highly non-local nonlinear regime. The experiments were conducted in nematic liquid crystals and allow a meaningful comparison with the prediction of a scalar theory in the perturbative limit, while addressing the need for beyond-paraxial analytical treatments. 
Claudio Conti, Marco Peccianti, Gaetano Assanto