Among the properties of light that dictate its mechanical effects, polarization has held a special place since the mechanical identification of the photon spin¹. Nowadays, little surprise might be expected from the mechanical action of linearly polarized weakly focused (paraxial) beams on transparent and homogeneous dielectrics. Still, here we unveil vectorial optomechanical effects mediated by the material anisotropy and the longitudinal field component inherent to real-world beams^2,3. Experimentally, this is demonstrated by using an elastic anisotropic medium prone to exhibit a sensitive and reversible effect, that is, a nematic liquid crystal, and our results are generalized to vector beams⁴. This represents an alternative to irreversible damaging approaches restricted to strongly non-paraxial fields⁵. The reported creation of multiple self-induced lenses from a single beam also open up topology assisted all-optical information routing strategies. Moreover, our findings point out the transverse internal optical energy flows (spin and orbital)⁶ as novel triggers to tailor structured optical nonlinearities.

在决定其机械效应的光的特性中，自从对光子自旋¹进行机械识别以来，偏振就占据了特殊的位置。如今，线性偏振的弱聚焦（近轴）光束在透明和均质电介质上的机械作用可能不足为奇。尽管如此，在这里我们还是揭示了由材料各向异性和现实光束^2,3固有的纵向场分量介导的矢量光机械效应。实验上，这是通过使用易于表现出敏感和可逆作用的弹性各向异性介质（即向列液晶）证明的，我们的研究结果推广到矢量束⁴。这代表了不可逆破坏方法的替代方法，该方法仅限于强非傍轴场⁵。据报道，从单个光束产生多个自感应透镜，这也为拓扑辅助全光信息路由策略的发展开辟了道路。此外，我们的研究结果指出，横向内部光能流（自旋和轨道）⁶是定制结构化光学非线性的新颖触发因素。