Extended Data Fig. 3: Experimental reconstruction of the director field perturbation for incident light with uniform linear polarization state.

Reconstructed spatial distribution of the director field in the mid-plane of the cell \({\tilde{{\bf{n}}}}_{\perp }=({\tilde{n}}_{x},{\tilde{n}}_{y},0)\) as in Fig. 2(b) but for another set of parameters: θ₀ = 8. 0^∘, δ = 2.0 and P = 250 mW. Here \(\max | {\tilde{n}}_{y}| /\max | {\tilde{n}}_{x}| \simeq 0.88\). This demonstrates the robustness of the effect versus the diameter of the beam. We notice that the required power to reach the same magnitude for the material response increases with δ whereas choosing δ > 1 facilitates the observations. The latter point can be understood from the fact that the nonlocal character of the nematic response is strengthened as δ decreases ⁴⁴.