Dark soliton molecules in nonlinear optics

Abstract

The study on soliton molecules is one of the important topics in nonlinear science especially in nonlinear optics. The bright soliton molecules have been experimentally observed in optics, however, the dark soliton molecules have not yet been experimentally observed. Theoretically, the soliton molecules have been found for some coupled nonlinear systems. Nevertheless, the soliton molecules have not been obtained for non-coupled single component nonlinear models. In this paper, we first study the exact periodic waves (soliton lattices) and solitary waves for a nonlinear nonintegrable optical model with second and third order dispersions and high order nonlinear effects including self-steeping, Raman scattering and nonlinear dispersion. Two types of dark soliton lattice and three types of soliton lattice are explicitly exhibited for general nonintegrable system. Five types of bright (with and without gray background), dark and gray solitons can be obtained from the limit cases of the modules of the soliton lattices. For an integrable case, using a novel generalized bilinear form of a single component nonlinear system, the multi-soliton solutions are obtained and expressed by a completely new form which are invariant under the full reversal transformations such as the parity, the time reversal, the charge conjugate and the field reversal. To find soliton molecules, a novel mechanism, the velocity resonant, is proposed. Starting from the multi-soliton solutions and using the velocity resonance mechanism, the analytical expression of the dark soliton molecules can be readily obtained. For the model given in this paper, the integrable higher order nonlinear Schrodinger equation, one can proved that the interactions among the dark soliton molecules and the usually solitons are elastic. It is worth pointing out that soliton molecules can also exist in the case of nonintegrable systems.