Stabilization of vortex solitons in nonlocal nonlinear media

We study the evolution of vortex solitons in optical media with a nonlocal nonlinear response. We employ a modulation theory for the vortex parameters based on an averaged Lagrangian, and analyze the azimuthal evolution of both the vortex width and diffractive radiation. We describe analytically the physical mechanism for vortex stabilization due to the long-range nonlocal nonlinear response, the effect observed earlier in numerical simulations only.