Soliton emission in the forced non-linear Schrödinger equation

Abstract

The plasma waves generated by resonant absorption of light in the vicinity of the critical density of laser-produced plasmas, are modelled by a non-linear Schrödinger equation with additional terms accounting for the presence of a source and the inhomogeneity of the medium.We use an average lagrangian method to describe the behaviour of the solutions of this equation in the range of parameters where periodic soliton generation occurs. An iterating scheme describing the successive emission of solitons yields values for this range of parameters which are in reasonable agreement with those found from direct numerical simulations of the non-linear Schrödinger equation.