We discuss generic properties of rotating nonlinear wave solutions, the so called azimuthons, in nonlocal media. Variational methods allow us to derive approximative values for the rotating frequency, which is shown to depend crucially on the nonlocal response function. Further on, we link families of azimuthons to internal modes of classical non-rotating stationary solutions, namely vortex and multipole solitons. This offers an exhaustive method to identify azimuthons in a given nonlocal medium.
We show that quadratic solitons are equivalent to solitons of a nonlocal Kerr medium. This provides new physical insight into the properties of quadratic solitons, often believed to be equivalent to solitons of an effective saturable Kerr medium. The nonlocal analogy also allows for novel analytical solutions and the prediction of novel bound states of quadratic solitons.
We investigate theoretically the interaction of dark solitons in materials with a spatially nonlocal nonlinearity. In particular we do this analytically and for arbitrary degree of nonlocality. We employ the variational technique to show that nonlocality induces an attractive force in the otherwise repulsive soliton interaction.
We investigate properties of dark solitons in nonlocal materials with an arbitrary degree of nonlocality. We employ the variational technique and describe the dark solitons, for the first time, in the whole range of degree of nonlocality.
We have introduced a class of spiraling elliptic solitons in generic nonlocal nonlinear media. The spiraling elliptic solitons carry the orbital angular momentum. This class solitons are stable for any degree of nonlocality except for the local case when the response function of the material is Gaussian function.
We investigate the propagation of one-dimensional bright and dark spatial solitons in a nonlocal Kerr-like media, in which the nonlocality is of general form. We find an exact analytical solution to the nonlinear propagation equation in the case of weak nonlocality. We study the properties of these solitons and show their stability.
We investigate the propagation of partially coherent beams in spatially nonlocal nonlinear media with a logarithmic type of nonlinearity. We derive analytical formulas for the evolution of the beam parameters and conditions for the formation of nonlocal incoherent solitons.
We predict random-phase spatial solitons in instantaneous nonlocal nonlinear media. The key mechanism responsible for self-trapping of such incoherent wave-packets is played by the non-local (rather than the traditional non-instantaneous) nature of the nonlinearity. This new kind of incoherent solitons has profoundly different features than other incoherent solitons.
We reveal that nonlocality can provide a simple physical mechanism for stabilization of multi-hump optical solitons, and present the first example of stable rotating dipole solitons and soliton spiraling, known to be unstable in all types of realistic nonlinear media with local response.
We address the impact of nonlocality in the physical features exhibited by solitons supported by Kerr-type nonlinear media with an imprinted optical lattice. We discover that nonlocality of nonlinear response can profoundly affect the soliton mobility, hence all the related phenomena. Such behavior manifests itself in significant reductions of the Peierls-Nabarro potential with increase of the degree of nonlocality, a result that opens the rare possibility in nature of almost radiationless propagation of highly localized solitons across the lattice.
We address the stability of multipole-mode solitons in nonlocal Kerr-type nonlinear media. Such solitons comprise several out-of-phase peaks packed together by the forces acting between them. We discover that dipole-, triple-, and quadrupole-mode solitons can be made stable, whereas all higher-order soliton bound states are unstable.
We reveal that spatially localized vortex solitons become stable in self-focusing nonlinear media when the vortex symmetry-breaking azimuthal instability is eliminated by a nonlocal nonlinear response. We study the main properties of different types of vortex beams and discuss the physical mechanism of the vortex stabilization in spatially nonlocal nonlinear media.
We discuss existence and stability of two-dimensional solitons in media with spatially nonlocal nonlinear response. We show that such systems, which include thermal nonlinearity and dipolar Bose Einstein condensates, may support a variety of stationary localized structures - including rotating spatial solitons. We also demonstrate that the stability of these structures critically depends on the spatial profile of the nonlocal response function.
The optical spatial solitons with ellipse-shaped spots have generally been considered to be a result of either linear or nonlinear anisotropy. In this paper, we introduce a class of spiraling elliptic solitons in the nonlocal nonlinear media without both linear and nonlinear anisotropy. The spiraling elliptic solitons carry the orbital angular momentum, which plays a key role in the formation of such solitons, and are stable for any degree of nonlocality except the local case when the response function of the material is Gaussian function. The formation of such solitons can be attributable to …
We investigate the properties of localized waves in systems governed by nonlocal nonlinear Schrodinger type equations. We prove rigorously by bounding the Hamiltonian that nonlocality of the nonlinearity prevents collapse in, e.g., Bose-Einstein condensates and optical Kerr media in all physical dimensions. The nonlocal nonlinear response must be symmetric, but can be of completely arbitrary shape. We use variational techniques to find the soliton solutions and illustrate the stabilizing effect of nonlocality.
Nonlocality is a key feature of many physical systems since it prevents a catastrophic collapse and a symmetry-breaking azimuthal instability of intense wave beams in a bulk self-focusing nonlinear media. This opens up an intriguing perspective for stabilization of complex topological structures such as higher-order solitons, vortex rings and vortex ring-on-line complexes. Using direct numerical simulations, we find a class of cylindrically-symmetric $n$-th order spatial solitons having the intensity distribution with a central bright spot surrounded by $n$ bright rings of varying size. We inv…
We have performed numerical analysis of the two-dimensional (2D) soliton solutions in Bose-Einstein condensates with nonlocal dipole-dipole interactions. For the modified 2D Gross-Pitaevski equation with nonlocal and attractive local terms, we have found numerically different types of nonlinear localized structures such as fundamental solitons, radially symmetric vortices, nonrotating multisolitons (dipoles and quadrupoles), and rotating multisolitons (azimuthons). By direct numerical simulations we show that these structures can be made stable.
Existence and stability of PT-symmetric gap solitons in a periodic structure with defocusing nonlocal nonlinearity are studied both theoretically and numerically. We find that, for any degree of nonlocality, gap solitons are always unstable in the presence of an imaginary potential. The instability manifests itself as a lateral drift of solitons due to an unbalanced particle flux. We also demonstrate that the perturbation growth rate is proportional to the amount of gain (loss), thus predicting the observability of stable gap solitons for small imaginary potentials.
We address (2+1)D surface solitons occurring at the interface between a linear medium and a nonlocal nonlinear medium whose nonlinear contribution to the refractive index has a initial value at the interface. We find that there exist stable single and dipole surface solitons which do not exhibit a power threshold. The properties of the surface solitons can be affected by the initial value and the degree of nonlocality. When a laser beam is launched away from the interface, the beam will be periodic oscillations.
We study, both theoretically and experimentally, the transverse modulational instability of spatial stripe solitons in anisotropic nonlocal photorefractive media. We demonstrate that the instability scenarios depend strongly on the stripe orientation, but the anisotropy-induced features are largely suppressed for spatial solitons created by self-trapping of partially incoherent light.
We discuss differences between the variational approach to solitons and the accessible soliton approximaion in a highly nonlocal nonlinear medium. We compare results of both approximations by considering the same system of equations in the same spatial region, under the same boundary conditions. We also compare these approximations with the numerical solution of the equations. We find that the variational highly nonlocal approximation provides more accurate results and as such is more appropriate solution than the accessible soliton approximation. The accessible soliton model offers a radical …
For a number of nonlocal nonlinear equations such as nonlocal, nonlinear Schrödinger equation (NLSE), nonlocal Ablowitz-Ladik (AL), nonlocal, saturable discrete NLSE (DNLSE), coupled nonlocal NLSE, coupled nonlocal AL and coupled nonlocal, saturable DNLSE, we obtain periodic solutions in terms of Jacobi elliptic functions as well as the corresponding hyperbolic soliton solutions. Remarkably, in all the six cases, we find that unlike the corresponding local cases, all the nonlocal models simultaneously admit both the bright and the dark soliton solutions. Further, in all the six cases, not only…
We demonstrate the existence of stable three-dimensional spatiotemporal solitons (STSs) in media with a nonlocal cubic nonlinearity. Fundamental (nonspinning) STSs forming one-parameter families are stable if their propagation constant exceeds a certain critical value, that is inversely proportional to the range of nonlocality of nonlinear response. All spinning three-dimensional STSs are found to be unstable.
We present an overview of recent advances in the understanding of optical beams in nonlinear media with a spatially nonlocal nonlinear response. We discuss the impact of nonlocality on the modulational instability of plane waves, the collapse of finite-size beams, and the formation and interaction of spatial solitons.
We apply the variational approach to solitons in highly nonlocal nonlinear media in $D=1,2,3$ dimensions. We compare results obtained by the variational approach with those obtained in the accessible soliton approximation, by considering the same system of equations in the same spatial region and under the same boundary conditions. To assess the accuracy of these approximations, we also compare them with the numerical solution of the equations. We discover that the variational highly nonlocal approximation provides more accurate results and as such is more appropriate solution than the accessi…
We study stability and dynamics of the single cylindrically symmetric solitary structures and dipolar solitonic molecules in spatially nonlocal media. The main properties of the solitons, vortex solitons, and dipolar solitons are investigated analytically and numerically. The vortices and higher-order solitons show the transverse symmetry-breaking azimuthal instability below some critical power. We find the threshold of the vortex soliton stabilization using the linear stability analysis and direct numerical simulations. The higher-order solitons, which have a central peak and one or more surr…
A study of high-order solitons in three nonlocal nonlinear Schrödinger equations is presented, which includes the \PT-symmetric, reverse-time, and reverse-space-time nonlocal nonlinear Schrödinger equations. General high-order solitons in three different equations are derived from the same Riemann-Hilbert solutions of the AKNS hierarchy, except for the difference in the corresponding symmetry relations on the "perturbed" scattering data. Dynamics of general high-order solitons in these equations is further analyzed. It is shown that the high-order fundamental-soliton is always moving on severa…
We find exact monotonic solitons in the nonlocal Gordon equation u_{tt}=J*u-u-f(u), in the case J(x)=1/2 e^{-|x|}. To this end we come up with an inverse method, which gives a representation of the set of nonlinearities admitting such solutions. We also study u''''+łu''-sin u=0, which arises from the above when we write it in traveling wave coordinates and pass to a certain limit. For this equation we find an exact 4π-kink and show the nonexistence of 2π-kinks, using the analytic continuation method of Amick and McLeod.
We study the propagation of solitons on complex chains built by inserting finite graphs at two sites of an unbranched chain. We compare numerical findings with the results of an analytical linear approximation scheme describing the interaction of large-fast solitons with non-local topological defects on a chain. We show that the transmission properties of the solitons strongly depend on the structure of the inserted graph, giving a tool to control the soliton propagation through the choice of pertinent graphs to be attached to the chain.
We introduce the concept of soliton clusters -- multi-soliton bound states in a homogeneous bulk optical medium, and reveal a key physical mechanism for their stabilization associated with a staircase-like phase distribution that induces a net angular momentum and leads to cluster rotation. The ringlike soliton clusters provide a nontrivial generalization of the concepts of two-soliton spiraling, optical vortex solitons, and necklace-type optical beams.
We study the formation of azimuthons, i.e., rotating spatial solitons, in media with nonlocal focusing nonlinearity. We show that whole families of these solutions can be found by considering internal modes of classical non-rotating stationary solutions, namely vortex solitons. This offers an exhaustive method to identify azimuthons in a given nonlocal medium. We demonstrate formation of azimuthons of different vorticities and explain their properties by considering the strongly nonlocal limit of accessible solitons.
We investigate one-dimensional Helmholtz solitons with nonlocal nonlinearity. We show an exact analytical solution to the nonlocal nonlinear nonparaxial propagation equation in the cases of high and weak nonlocality. We also numerically find that the degree of nonlocality can affect the width of nonlocal Helmholtz soliton beams, but have no effect on their stability. Contrarily, nonparaxiality can affect their stability, but have no effect on their width.
We study gray solitons in nonlocal nonlinear media and show that they are stable and can form bound states. We reveal that gray soliton velocity depends on the nonlocality degree, and that it can be drastically reduced in highly nonlocal media. This is in contrast to the case of local media, where the maximal velocity is dictated solely by the asymptotic soliton amplitude.
We predict the existence of surface dark solitons at the interface between a self-defocusing nonlocal nonlinear medium and a linear medium. The fundamental and higher-order surface dark solitons can exist when the linear refractive index of the self-defocusing media is much larger than that of the linear media. The fundamental solitons are stable and the stabilities of higher-order solitons depend on both nonlocality degree and propagation constant.
We reveal that lattice interfaces imprinted in nonlocal nonlinear media support surface solitons that do not exist in other similar settings, including interfaces of local and nonlocal uniform materials. We show the impact of nonlocality on the domains of existence and stability of the surface solitons, focusing on new types of dipole solitons residing partially inside the optical lattice. We find that such solitons feature strongly asymmetric shapes and that they are stable in large parts of their existence domain.
The large phase shift of strongly nonlocal spatial optical soliton(SNSOS) in the (1+1)-dimensional [(1+1)D] lead glass is investigated using the perturbation method. The fundamental soliton solution of the nonlocal nonlinear Schodinger equation(NNLSE) under the second approximation in strongly nonlocal case is obtained. It is found that the phase shift rate along the propagation direction of such soliton is proportional to the degree of nonlocality, which indicates that one can realize Pi-phase-shift within one Rayleigh distance in (1+1)D lead glass. A full comprehension of the nonlocality-enh…
General $N$-solitons in three recently-proposed nonlocal nonlinear Schrödinger equations are presented. These nonlocal equations include the reverse-space, reverse-time, and reverse-space-time nonlinear Schrödinger equations, which are nonlocal reductions of the Ablowitz-Kaup-Newell-Segur (AKNS) hierarchy. It is shown that general $N$-solitons in these different equations can be derived from the same Riemann-Hilbert solutions of the AKNS hierarchy, except that symmetry relations on the scattering data are different for these equations. This Riemann-Hilbert framework allows us to identify new t…
A new integrable (2+1)-dimensional nonlocal nonlinear Schrödinger equation is proposed. The $N$-soliton solution is given by Gram type determinant. It is found that the localized N-soliton solution has interesting interaction behavior which shows change of amplitude of localized pulses after collisions.
We present the experimental observation of scalar multi-pole solitons in highly nonlocal nonlinear media, including dipole-, tri-pole, quadru-pole, and necklace-type solitons, organized as arrays of out-of-phase bright spots. These complex solitons are meta-stable, but with a large parameters range where the instability is weak, enabling their experimental observation.
We address the evolution of higher-order excited states, such as vortex and multi-hump solitons, in nonlocal media with synthetic, competing focusing and defocusing nonlinearities with different nonlocal transverse scales. We reveal that introduction of suitable competing effects makes possible the stabilization of vortex solitons with topological charge m>2, as well as one-dimensional multi-hump solitons with number of humps p>4, all of which are highly unstable in natural nonlocal materials with focusing nonlinearities.
We show that multipole solitons can be made stable via vectorial coupling in bulk nonlocal nonlinear media. Such vector solitons are composed of mutually incoherent nodeless and multipole components jointly inducing a nonlinear refractive index profile. We found that stabilization of the otherwise highly unstable multipoles occurs below a maximum energy flow. Such threshold is determined by the nonlocality degree.
We analyze the existence, stability, and mobility of gap solitons (GSs) in a periodic photonic structure built into a nonlocal self-defocusing medium. Counter-intuitively, the GSs are supported even by a highly nonlocal nonlinearity, which makes the system quasi-linear. Unlike local models, the variational approximation (VA) predicts the GSs in a good agreement with numerical findings, due to the suppression of undulating tails of the solitons.
We address the impact of asymmetric nonlocal diffusion nonlinearity on the properties of gap solitons supported by photorefractive crystal with an imprinted optical lattice. We reveal how the asymmetric nonlocal response alters the domains of existence and the stability of solitons originating from different gaps. We find that in such media gap solitons cease to exist above a threshold of the nonlocality degree. We discuss how the interplay between nonlocality and lattice strength modifies the gap soliton mobility.
The existence and stability of defect solitons in parity-time (PT) symmetric optical lattices with nonlocal nonlinearity are reported. It is found that nonlocality can expand the stability region of defect solitons. For positive or zero defects, fundamental and dipole solitons can exist stably in the semi-infinite gap and the first gap, respectively. For negative defects, fundamental solitons can be stable in both the semi-infinite gap and the first gap, whereas dipole solitons are unstable in the first gap. There exist a maximum degree of nonlocal nonlinearity, above which the fundamental sol…
The multi-peak solitons and their stability are investigated for the nonlocal nonlinear system with the sine-oscillation response, including both the cases of positive and negative Kerr coefficients. The Hermite-Gaussian-type multi-peak solitons and the ranges of the degree of nonlocality within which the solitons exist are analytically obtained by the variational approach. This is the first time, to our knowledge at least, to discuss the solution existence range of the multi-peak solitons analytically, although approximately. The variational analytical results are confirmed by the numerical o…
We study the non-linear Schroedinger equation in (1+1) dimensions in which the nonlinear term is taken in the form of a nonlocal interaction of the Coulomb or Yukawa-type. We solve the equation numerically and find that, for all values of the nonlocal coupling constant, and in all cases, the equation possesses solitonic solutions. We show that our results, for the dependence of the height of the soliton on the coupling constant, are in good agreement with the predictions based on an analytic treatment in which the soliton is approximated by a gaussian.
The effect of finite boundaries in the propagation of spatial nonlocal solitons in media with cylindrical symmetry is analyzed. Using Ehrenfest's theorem together with the Green's function of the nonlinear refractive index equation, we derive an analytical expression for the force exerted on the soliton by the boundaries, verifying its validity by full numerical propagation. We show that the dynamics of the soliton are determined not only by the degree of nonlocality, but also by the boundary conditions for the refractive index. In particular, we report that a supercritical pitchfork bifurcati…
Quasiperiodic oscillations and shape-transformations of higher-order bright solitons in nonlinear nonlocal media have been frequently observed in recent years, however, the origin of these phenomena was never completely elucidated. In this paper, we perform a linear stability analysis of these higher-order solitons by solving the Bogoliubov-de Gennes equations. This enables us to understand the emergence of a new oscillatory state as a growing unstable mode of a higher-order soliton. Using dynamically important states as a basis, we provide low-dimensional visualizations of the dynamics and id…
We put forward a strategy to achieve synthetic nonlinearities where local and nonlocal contributions compete on similar footing, thus yielding intermediate tunable responses ranging from fully local to strongly nonlocal. The physical setting addressed is a semiconductor material with both Kerr and thermal nonlinearities illuminated by a pulse train with suitable single-pulse width and repetition rate. We illustrate the potential of the scheme by showing that it supports soliton properties that are not accessible in either limit of purely local or purely nonlocal media.
We study formation of rotating three-dimensional high-order solitons (azimuthons) in Bose Einstein condensate with attractive nonlocal nonlinear interaction. In particular, we demonstrate formation of toroidal rotating solitons and investigate their stability. We show that variational methods allow a very good approximation of such solutions and predict accurately the soliton rotation frequency. We also find that these rotating localized structures are very robust and persist even if the initial condensate conditions are rather far from the exact soliton solutions. Furthermore, the presence of…
We address the stabilization of dipole solitons in nonlocal nonlinear materials by two different approaches. First, we study the properties of such solitons in thermal nonlinear media, where the refractive index landscapes induced by laser beams strongly depend on the boundary conditions and on the sample geometry. We show how the sample geometry impacts the stability of higher-order solitons in thermal nonlinear media and reveal that dipole solitons can be made dynami-cally stable in rectangular geometries in contrast to their counterparts in thermal samples with square cross-section. Second,…
We study effects of nonlocality of the cubic self-focusing nonlinearity on the stability and symmetry-breaking bifurcation (SBB) of solitons in the model of a planar dual-core optical waveg- uide with nonlocal (thermal) nonlinearity. In comparison with the well-known coupled systems with the local nonlinearity, the present setting is affected by the competition of different spatial scales, viz., the coupling length and correlation radius of the nonlocality, $\sqrt{d}$. By means of numer- ical methods and variational approximation (VA, which is relevant for small d), we find that, with the incr…
In this paper, we succeed to bilinearize the $\cal{PT}$-invariant nonlocal nonlinear Schrödinger (NNLS) equation through a nonstandard procedure and present more general bright soliton solutions. We achieve this by bilinearizing both the NNLS equation and its associated parity transformed complex conjugate equation in a novel way. The obtained one and two soliton solutions are invariant under combined space and time reversal transformations and are more general than the known ones. Further, by considering the two-soliton solution we bring out certain novel interaction properties of the $\cal{P…
We investigate the focusing coupled PT-symmetric nonlocal nonlinear Schrodinger equation employing Darboux transformation approach. We find a family of exact solutions including pairs of Bright-Bright, Dark-Dark and Bright-Dark solitons in addition to solitary waves. We show that one can convert bright bound state onto a dark bound state in a two-soliton solution by selectively fine tuning the amplitude dependent parameter. We also show that the energy in each mode remains conserved unlike the celebrated Manakov model. We also characterize the behaviour of the soliton solutions in detail. We e…
Spatially-periodic patterns are studied in nonlocally coupled Gross-Pitaevskii equation. We show first that spatially periodic patterns appear in a model with the dipole-dipole interaction. Next, we study a model with a finite-range coupling, and show that a repulsively coupled system is closely related with an attractively coupled system and its soliton solution becomes a building block of the spatially-periodic structure. That is, the spatially-periodic structure can be interpreted as a soliton lattice. An approximate form of the soliton is given by a variational method. Furthermore, the eff…
We investigate the breathing of optical spatial solitons in highly nonlocal media. Generalizing the Ehrenfest theorem, we demonstrate that oscillations in beam width obey a fourth-order ordinary differential equation. Moreover, in actual highly nonlocal materials, the original accessible soliton model by Snyder and Mitchell [Science \textbf{276}, 1538 (1997)] cannot accurately describe the dynamics of self-confined beams as the transverse size oscillations have a period which not only depends on power but also on the initial width. Modeling the nonlinear response by a Poisson equation driven b…
We introduce vector soliton complexes in nonlocal Kerr-type nonlinear media. We discover that under proper conditions the combination of nonlocality and vectorial coupling has a remarkable stabilizing action on multi-humped solitons. In particular, we find that stable bound states featuring several field oscillations in each soliton component do exist. This affords stabilization of vector soliton trains incorporating large number of humps, a class of structures known to self-destroy via strong instabilities in scalar settings.
We point out certain basic misconceptions and incorrect statements given by Gürses and Pekcan in the recent paper {\bf J. Math. Phys. 59, 051501 (2018)}. We re-emphasize the soliton solution derived by us earlier in {\bf Phys. Lett. A. 381, 2380 (2017)} for the reverse space nonlocal nonlinear Schrödinger equation is correct and more general and contains the solutions given by Gürses and Pekcan as special cases.
We address spectral tunneling of walking spatial solitons in photorefractive media with nonlocal diffusion of the nonlinear response and an imprinted shallow optical lattice. In contrast to materials with local nonlinearities, where solitons travelling across the lattice close to the Bragg angle suffer large radiative losses, in photorefractive media with diffusion nonlinearity resulting in self-bending solitons survive when their propagation angle approaches and even exceeds the Bragg angle. In the spatial frequency domain this effect can be considered as tunneling through the band of spatial…
We study the transverse instability and dynamics of bright soliton stripes in two-dimensional nonlocal nonlinear media. Using a multiscale perturbation method, we derive analytically the first-order correction to the soliton shape, which features an exponential growth in time -- a signature of the transverse instability. The soliton's characteristic timescale associated with its exponential growth,is found to depend on the square root of the nonlocality parameter. This, in turn, highlights the nonlocality-induced suppression of the transverse instability. Our analytical predictions are corrobo…
