Vector solitons in the dynamics of anharmonic monatomic lattices

It is shown that three types of solitary acoustic waves can develop in anharmonic crystal lattices corresponding to the three branches of acoustic phonons. A system of three nonlinear Schrödinger equations is derived to describe this situation. For greatly different group velocities, the interaction between solitons reduces collisions between them. When the group velocities of the different acoustic modes in a lattice are close to one another, bound states of the corresponding types of solitary waves occur. Bound states of this sort are vector solitons, whose polarization varies along the pulse. If the transverse acoustic modes are degenerate in velocity, the situation is extremely similar to the propagation of pulses in optical fibers.