Directional coupling with optical vortex soliton pair

Summary form only given.We have demonstrated the propagation of an optical vortex soliton (OVS) in the center of a green Ar ion laser beam in a self-defocusing nonlinear medium. The dark core of an OVS has actually a graded refractive-index profile, which is the imprint of the OVS in the nonlinear medium.