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Such dual diffraction can be balanced out by one and the same nonlinear response, giving rise to light self-confinement into astigmatic spatial solitons: self-focusing can compensate for the spreading of a bell-shaped beam, leading to quasi-2D solitary wavepackets which result from 1D transverse self-localization combined with a discrete soliton. We demonstrate such intensity-dependent beam trapping in chiral soft matter, exhibiting one-dimensional discrete diffraction along the helical axis and one-dimensional continuous diffraction in the orthogonal plane. In nematic liquid crystals with suitable birefringence and chiral arrangement, the reorientational nonlinearity is shown to support bell-shaped solitary waves with simple astigmatism dependent on the medium birefringence as well as on the dual diffraction of the input wavepacket. The observations are in agreement with a nonlinear nonlocal model for the all-optical response.<\/jats:p>","DOI":"10.1038\/srep22923","type":"journal-article","created":{"date-parts":[[2016,3,15]],"date-time":"2016-03-15T11:09:46Z","timestamp":1458040186000},"update-policy":"https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1007\/springer_crossmark_policy","source":"Crossref","is-referenced-by-count":8,"title":["Quasi two-dimensional astigmatic solitons in soft chiral metastructures"],"prefix":"10.1038","volume":"6","author":[{"given":"Urszula A.","family":"Laudyn","sequence":"first","affiliation":[],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Pawe\u0142 S.","family":"Jung","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Miros\u0142aw A.","family":"Karpierz","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]},{"given":"Gaetano","family":"Assanto","sequence":"additional","affiliation":[],"role":[{"role":"author","vocabulary":"crossref"}]}],"member":"297","published-online":{"date-parts":[[2016,3,15]]},"reference":[{"key":"BFsrep22923_CR1","doi-asserted-by":"crossref","unstructured":"Kivshar, Y. 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