Topological solitons and Bloch oscillations in Bose-Einstein condensate

We studied the evolution of topological solitons in the space of its width d and the conjugated momenta l during Bloch oscillations. The unstable solitons are confined in a well with its boundary as four branches of a hyperbola, the stable solitons sit at the four branches of the hyperbola (d · l = 28) which is in agreement with the generalized Heisenberg uncertainty principal Δd · Δl ? Const. The generation, annihilation, and bifurcation of solitons is going on in the well. In studying the behavior of the nonlinear interaction parameter for the stable solitons, it is found that bright solitons and dark solitons alternatively come into action during the breakdown and revival of Bloch oscillations.     

The solitons in Bessel lattice potential with nonlocal nonlinearity

The existence and stability of fundamental and multipole solitons in Bessel potential are studied, including linear case, and nonlocal nonlinearity cases. For linear case, the eigenvalues and eigenfunction for different modulated depths of Bessel potential are obtained numerically. For nonlocal nonlinear cases, the existence and stability of fundamental and multipole solitons are studied. The results show that there exists a critical propagation constant b _c of solitons, below which the solitons vanish. The value of b _c is associated with the eigenvalue for linear case. It is found that nonlocality can expand the stability region of solitons. Fundamental and dipole solitons are stable in the whole region and the stable range of multipole solitons increase with increasing of the nonlocal degree.     

Cusp and Regular Ion-Acoustic Solitons

Cups and regular smooth solitons are studied using the fluid model in cylindrical geometry for parallel propagating ion-acoustic waves in a low β plasma. It is found that smooth solitons only occur in the supersonic regime, whereas cusp solitons occur both in supersonic and subsonic regimes. In the supersonic regime, the amplitude and the width of cusp solitons increase when the Mach number M increases and initial electric field E ₀ decreases. However, the amplitude of smooth regular solitons increases and their width decreases when E ₀ increases and M decreases. For the subsonic case, both the amplitude as well as the width of a cusp solitons increase when M increases and E ₀ decreases. Corresponding to these cusp and regular solitons, bipolar electric field structures are also studied. These results may be helpful in understanding the properties of ion-acoustic regular and cusp solitons in space plasmas.     

Optical solitons due to quadratic nonlinearities: from basic physics to futuristic applications

We present an overview of nonlinear phenomena related to optical quadratic solitons—intrinsically multi-component localized states of light, which can exist in media without inversion symmetry at the molecular level. Starting with presentation of a few derivation schemes of basic equations describing three-wave parametric wave mixing in diffractive and/or dispersive quadratic media, we discuss their continuous wave solutions and modulational instability phenomena, and then move to the classification and stability analysis of the parametric solitary waves. Not limiting ourselves to the simplest spatial and temporal quadratic solitons we also overview results related to the spatio-temporal solitons (light bullets), higher order quadratic solitons, solitons due to competing nonlinearities, dark solitons, gap solitons, cavity solitons and vortices. Special attention is paid to a comprehensive discussion of the recent experimental demonstrations of the parametric solitons including their interactions and switching. We also discuss connections of quadratic solitons with other types of solitons in optics and their interdisciplinary significance.     

Temporal behavior of dark spatial solitons in closed-circuit photovoltaic media

We show that the time-dependent nonlinear wave equation in closed-circuit photovoltaic media can exhibit quasi-steady-state and steady-state spatial solitons. We demonstrate that the formation time of open-circuit quasi-steady-state and open-circuit steady-state dark solitons decreases with an increase in the intensity ratio of the soliton, which is the ratio between the soliton peak intensity and the dark irradiance. We find that for the time-dependent nonlinear wave equation that exhibits only an open-circuit steady-state dark soliton, changing the electric current density J₀ does not generate quasi-steady-state dark solitons and affects the formation time of steady-state dark solitons and that for the time-dependent nonlinear wave equation that exhibits an open-circuit quasi-steady-state dark soliton, changing J₀ gives rise to three different time evolution regimes of the full width half maximum of the soliton’s intensity. The first regime shows that the formation time of steady-state dark solitons increases with J₀ whereas the formation time of quasi-steady-state dark solitons is independent of J₀. The second regime shows that the formation time of steady-state dark solitons decreases with an increases in J₀ and the formation time of quasi-steady-state dark solitons increases with J₀. The third regime shows that changing J₀ enables only steady-state dark solitons in the time-dependent nonlinear wave equation, of which the formation time increases with J₀.     

Waveguides induced by steady-state gray solitons in biased photorefractive-photovoltaic crystals

We carry out a theoretical investigation of the properties of waveguides induced by photorefractive one-dimensional steady-state gray spatial solitons (i.e., screening solitons, photovoltaic solitons, and screening-photovoltaic solitons). We demonstrate that waveguides induced by photorefractive steady-state gray spatial solitons are only a single guided mode for both all soliton graynesses and all values of ρ, where ρ is the ratio between the soliton peak intensity and the dark irradiance, and moreover, waveguides induced by gray photovoltaic solitons for closed-circuit condition are also only a single guided mode for all electric current densities. We find that the confined energy near the center of a photorefractive steady-state gray spatial soliton increases with ρ and decreases with an increase in the soliton grayness. We also find that the confined energy near the center of a gray photovoltaic soliton for closed-circuit condition increases with the electric current density. On the other hand, waveguides induced by gray screening-photovoltaic solitons are gray screening soliton-induced waveguides when the bulk photovoltaic effect is neglectable and are gray photovoltaic soliton-induced waveguides when the external bias field is absent.     

Multi-peak solitons in PT-symmetric Bessel optical lattices with defects

This paper presents a theoretical analysis of the existence and stability of multi-peak solitons in parity–time-symmetric Bessel optical lattices with defects in nonlinear media. The results demonstrate that there always exists a critical propagation constant μ _c for the existence of multi-peak solitons regardless of whether the nonlinearity is self-focusing or self-defocusing. In self-focusing media, multi-peak solitons exist when the propagation constant μ > μ _c . In the self-defocusing case, solitons exist only when μ < μ _c . Only low-power solitons can propagate stably when random noise perturbations are present. Positive defects help stabilize the propagation of multi-peak solitons when the nonlinearity is self-focusing. When the nonlinearity is self-defocusing, however, multi-peak solitons in negative defects have wider stable regions than those in positive defects.     

Interactions between two-dimensional solitons in the diffractive-diffusive Ginzburg-Landau equation with the cubic-quintic nonlinearity

We report the results of systematic numerical analysis of collisions between two and three stable dissipative solitons in the two-dimensional (2D) complex Ginzburg-Landau equation (CGLE) with the cubic-quintic (CQ) combination of gain and loss terms. The equation may be realized as a model of a laser cavity which includes the spatial diffraction, together with the anomalous group-velocity dispersion (GVD) and spectral filtering acting in the temporal direction. Collisions between solitons are possible due to the Galilean invariance along the spatial axis. Outcomes of the collisions are identified by varying the GVD coefficient, β, and the collision “velocity” (actually, it is the spatial slope of the soliton’s trajectory). At small velocities, two or three in-phase solitons merge into a single standing one. At larger velocities, both in-phase soliton pairs and pairs of solitons with opposite signs suffer a transition into a delocalized chaotic state. At still larger velocities, all collisions become quasi-elastic. A new outcome is revealed by collisions between slow solitons with opposite signs: they self-trap into persistent wobbling dipoles, which are found in two modifications — horizontal at smaller β, and vertical if β is larger (the horizontal ones resemble “zigzag” bound states of two solitons known in the 1D CGL equation of the CQ type). Collisions between solitons with a finite mismatch between their trajectories are studied too.     

Exact vortex solitons in a quasi-two-dimensional Bose–Einstein condensate with spatially inhomogeneous cubic–quintic nonlinearity

The exact vortex soliton solutions of the quasi-two-dimensional cubic–quintic Gross–Pitaevskii equation with spatially inhomogeneous nonlinearities are constructed by similarity transformation. It is demonstrated that spatially inhomogeneous cubic–quintic nonlinearity can support exact vortex solitons in which there are two quantum numbers S and m. The radius structures and density distributions of these vortex solitons are studied, and it is shown that the number of ring structure of the vortex solitons increases by one with increasing the “radial quantum number” m by one.     

Stable helical solitons in optical media

We present a review of new results which suggest the existence of fully stable spinning solitons (self-supporting localised objects with an internal vorticity) in optical fibres with self-focusing Kerr (cubic) nonlinearity, and in bulk media featuring a combination of the cubic self-defocusing and quadratic nonlinearities. Their distinctive difference from other optical solitons with an internal vorticity, which were recently studied in various optical media, theoretically and also experimentally, is that all the spinning solitons considered thus far have been found to be unstable against azimuthal perturbations. In the first part of the paper, we consider solitons in a nonlinear optical fibre in a region of parameters where the fibre carries exactly two distinct modes, viz., the fundamental one and the first-order helical mode. From the viewpoint of application to communication systems, this opens the way to doubling the number of channels carried by a fibre. Besides that, these solitons are objects of fundamental interest. To fully examine their stability, it is crucially important to consider collisions between them, and their collisions with fundamental solitons, in (ordinary or hollow) optical fibres. We introduce a system of coupled nonlinear Schrödinger equations for the fundamental and helical modes with nonstandard values of the cross-phase-modulation coupling constants, and show, in analytical and numerical forms, results of collisions between solitons carried by the two modes. In the second part of the paper, we demonstrate that the interaction of the fundamental beam with its second harmonic in bulk media, in the presence of self-defocusing Kerr nonlinearity, gives rise to the first ever example of completely stable spatial ring-shaped solitons with intrinsic vorticity. The stability is demonstrated both by direct simulations and by analysis of linearized equations.     

Complexes of moving transversely one-dimensional laser solitons

Complexes of weakly coupled moving solitons are found by numerical solution of the generalized Ginzburg-Landau equation for the transversely one-dimensional scheme of a wide-aperture A-class laser with saturable absorption. As distinct from the case of complexes of motionless solitons, the phase difference between the neighboring moving solitons is close to 7π/2.     

Incoherent solitons in strongly nonlocal media: The coherent density theory

We study the properties of one dimension incoherent accessible solitons in strongly nonlocal media with noninstantaneous Kerr nonlinearity. Following the coherent density theory, we obtain an exact solution of such incoherent solitons. The spatial width of the incoherent solitons is related to the incoherent angular power spectrum θ₀ as well as the incident power. The evolution properties of the intensity profile and the coherence characteristics are also discussed in detail when the solitons undergo periodic harmonic oscillation.     

Colliding Solitons for the Nonlinear Schrödinger Equation

We study the collision of two fast solitons for the nonlinear Schrödinger equation in the presence of a slowly varying external potential. For a high initial relative speed ||v|| of the solitons, we show that, up to times of order ||v|| after the collision, the solitons preserve their shape (in L ²-norm), and the dynamics of the centers of mass of the solitons is approximately determined by the external potential, plus error terms due to radiation damping and the extended nature of the solitons. We remark on how to obtain longer time scales under stronger assumptions on the initial condition and the external potential.     

Nontrivial class of composite U(σ+μ) vector solitons

A mixed problem for the compact U(m) vector nonlinear Schrödinger model with an arbitrary sign of coupling constant is exactly solved. It is shown that a new class of solutions—composite U(σ+μ) vector solitons with inelastic interaction (changing shape without energy loss) at σ>1 and strictly elastic interaction at σ=1— exists for m≥3. These solitons are color structures consisting of σ bright and μ dark solitons (σ+μ=m) and capable of existing in both self-focusing and defocusing media. The N-soliton formula universal for attraction and repulsion is derived by the Hirota method.     

Stability and quasi-equidistant propagation of NLS soliton trains

Using the complex Toda chain we model the asymptotic behavior of the N soliton pulse trains of the nonlinear Schrödinger equation. Stable asymptotic regimes are: (i) asymptotically free propagation of all N solitons; (ii) bound state regime where the N solitons may move quasi-equidistantly (QED); and (iii) various intermediate regimes. Our method allows one to determine analytically the set of initial soliton parameters corresponding to each regime. We list the soliton parameters, which ensure QED propagation of all N solitons since this is important for optical fiber communication.     

Coupled matter-wave solitons in optical lattices

We make use of a potential model to study the dynamics of two coupled matter-wave or Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) solitons loaded in optical lattices. With separate attention to linear and nonlinear lattices we find some remarkable differences for response of the system to effects of these lattices. As opposed to the case of linear optical lattice (LOL), the nonlinear lattice (NOL) can be used to control the mutual interaction between the two solitons. For a given lattice wave number k, the effective potentials in which the two solitons move are such that the well (V_eff(NOL)), resulting from the juxtaposition of soliton interaction and nonlinear lattice potential, is deeper than the corresponding well V_eff(LOL). But these effective potentials have opposite k dependence in the sense that the depth of V_eff(LOL) increases as k increases and that of V_eff(NOL) decreases for higher k values. We verify that the effectiveness of optical lattices to regulate the motion of the coupled solitons depends sensitively on the initial locations of the motionless solitons as well as values of the lattice wave number. For both LOL and NOL the two solitons meet each other due to mutual interaction if their initial locations are taken within the potential wells with the difference that the solitons in the NOL approach each other rather rapidly and take roughly half the time to meet as compared with the time needed for such coalescence in the LOL. In the NOL, the soliton profiles can move freely and respond to the lattice periodicity when the separation between their initial locations are as twice as that needed for a similar free movement in the LOL. We observe that, in both cases, slow tuning of the optical lattices by varying k with respect to a time parameter τ drags the oscillatory solitons apart to take them to different locations. In our potential model the oscillatory solitons appear to propagate undistorted. But a fully numerical calculation indicates that during evolution they exhibit decay and revival.     

Vortex solitons with inhomogeneous polarization in nonlocal self-focusing nonlinear media

Both azimuthally and radially polarized vortex solitons are investigated to be able to exist in highly nonlocal nonlinear media. We get exactly analytical solutions of azimuthally polarized vortex solitons with only polarization singularities and radially polarized vortex solitons with both phase singularities and polarization singularities. Both azimuthally and radially polarized vortex solitons can exist in nonlocal self-focusing nonlinear media with proper modulation of the beam power and the degree of nonlocality. Contrary to those of radially polarized counterparts in local Kerr media, the topological charge can be any integer. When the topological charge m ≠ 0, both phase singularities and polarization singularities work. When m = 0, the polarization singularities work. Azimuthally polarized vortex solitons with polarization singularities corresponds to the linearly polarized vortex solitons with single charge. Our results show that polarization singularities work the same way as phase singularities in some sense.     

Stability of vortex solitons in the cubic-quintic model

We investigate one-parameter families of two-dimensional bright spinning solitons (ring vortices) in dispersive media combining cubic self-focusing and quintic self-defocusing nonlinearities. In direct simulations, the spinning solitons display a symmetry-breaking azimuthal instability, which leads to breakup of a soliton into a set of fragments, each being a stable nonspinning soliton. The fragments fly out tangentially to the circular crest of the original vortex ring. If the soliton’s energy is large enough, the instability develops so slowly that the spinning solitons may be regarded as virtually stable ones, in accord with earlier published results. Growth rates of perturbation eigenmodes with different azimuthal “quantum numbers” are calculated as a function of the soliton’s propagation constant κ from a numerical solution of the linearized equations. As a result, a narrow (in terms of κ) stability window is found for extremely broad solitons with values of the “spin” s=1 and 2. However, analytical consideration of a special perturbation mode in the form of a spontaneous shift of the soliton’s central “bubble” (core of the vortex embedded in a broad soliton) demonstrates that even extremely broad solitons are subject to an exponentially weak instability against this mode. In actual simulations, a manifestation of this instability is found in a three-dimensional soliton with s=1. In the case when the two-dimensional spinning solitons are subject to tangible azimuthal instability, the number of the nonspinning fragments into which the soliton splits is usually, but not always, equal to the azimuthal number of the instability eigenmode with the largest growth rate.     

On condensation of the vortex solitons in a 2 + 1 dimensional abelian Higgs model

We study the roles of the vortex solitons in a 2 + 1 dimensional abelian Higgs model. From the effective lagrangian L_eff for the soliton field χ, it is found that the appearance of the solitons reduces the dielectric constant to a value smaller than one. If the Higgs field 〈H〉_vac does not vanish, the vacuum is in the Higgs phase and the solitons are not important. If it does vanish, the solitons become massless and L_eff has an infinite number of classically degenerate vacua. In the quantum theory of L_eff with large coupling constant e, no evidence of 〈χ〉_vac ≠ 0 has been discovered. For this conclusion to hold it is crucial that the free energy of scalar QED monotonically increases with e².