Domain walls and vector solitons in the coupled nonlinear Schrödinger equation

Abstract

Abstract We outline a program to classify domain walls (DWs) and vector solitons in the 1D two-component coupled nonlinear Schrödinger (CNLS) equation without restricting the signs or magnitudes of any coefficients. The CNLS equation is reduced first to a complex ordinary differential equation (ODE), and then to a real ODE after imposing a restriction. In the real ODE, we identify four possible equilibria including ZZ, ZN, NZ, and NN, with Z(N) denoting a zero (nonzero) value in a component, and analyze their spatial stability. We identify two types of DWs including asymmetric DWs between ZZ and NN and symmetric DWs between ZN and NZ. We identify three codimension-1 mechanisms for generating vector solitons in the real ODE including heteroclinic cycles, local bifurcations, and exact solutions. Heteroclinic cycles are formed by assembling two DWs back-to-back and generate extended bright-bright (BB), dark-dark (DD), and dark-bright (DB) solitons. Local bifurcations include the Turing (Hamiltonian–Hopf) bifurcation that generates Turing solitons with oscillatory tails and the pitchfork bifurcation that generates DB, bright-antidark, DD, and dark-antidark solitons with monotonic tails. Exact solutions include scalar bright and dark solitons with vector amplitudes. Any codimension-1 real vector soliton can be numerically continued into a codimension-0 family. Complex vector solitons have two more parameters: a dark or antidark component can be numerically continued in the wavenumber, while a bright component can be multiplied by a constant phase factor. We introduce a numerical continuation method to find real and complex vector solitons and show that DWs and DB solitons in the immiscible regime can be related by varying bifurcation parameters. We show that collisions between two DB solitons with a nonzero phase difference in their bright components typically feature a mass exchange that changes the frequencies and phases of the two bright components and the two soliton velocities.