This thesis deals with a detailed study of the material an optical waves aspects of the lightinducedreorientation of a nematic liquid crystal film in a particular framework, called the optical“topological” reorientation. In practice, it corresponds to a situation where a laser beaminduces an orientational topological defect for the director field, whose nature depends on thecharacteristics of the excitation light field (polarization, phase, intensity). First, the concept oftopological optical reorientation is introduced and the experimental conditions for its appearanceare discussed and experimentally verified. Then, the role of the polarization state of a Gaussianlight beam excitation is investigated, followed with the more complex situation of singular lightbeams with structured phase or polarization. Finally, we report on self-induced nonlinear opticalmanifestations of the topological reorientation, which include the experimental identificationand discussion of novel singular phenomena such as nonlinear spin-orbit interaction of light andself-induced vortex beam precession.
