Optical similaritons in nonlinear waveguides

We discover analytically an extensive family of optical similaritons, propagating inside graded-index nonlinear waveguide amplifiers. We show that there exists a one-to-one correspondence between these novel similaritons and standard solitons of the homogeneous nonlinear Schr?dinger equation. We demonstrate that for certain inhomogeneity and gain profiles, the newly discovered similaritons turn into solitons over sufficiently long propagation distances.