Experiments on partially coherent photorefractive solitons

We provide an overview of experimental studies on partially coherent spatial solitons in photorefractive materials, including the first experimental demonstration of bright and dark incoherent solitons, incoherent vortex solitons, Y-junction dark solitons and anti-dark solitons, and pixel-like incoherent soliton arrays. These solitons are created with partially spatially incoherent light beams by using the non-instantaneous photorefractive screening nonlinearity. Experimental results on waveguides induced by incoherent solitons are also presented and their potential applications for soliton-driven photonics are discussed. In particular, these experiments introduce the possibility of controlling high-power laser beams with low-power incoherent light sources in waveguide arrays as well as in planar, circular and beam-splitting waveguides optically induced in bulk photorefractive materials.