Observation of self-induced optical vortex precession.

We report on the observation of self-induced precession of an optical vortex as a result of the nonlinear interaction between light and liquid crystals. The phenomenon corresponds to an instability for the spin-orbit interaction of light that manifests as a spontaneous axial symmetry breaking, which leads to the orbital motion of the optical vortex around the beam propagation. A nonlinear spin Hall effect of light is experimentally identified, thereby unveiling an original demonstration of spin to extrinsic orbital light angular momentum self-conversion.