The compression and stretching of similaritons with nonlinear tunneling in optical fibers

The similarity transformation between the inhomogeneous (n+1)-dimensional generalized nonlinear Schrodinger equation (NLSE) and the constant-coefficient NLSE in optical fibers is constructed with some constraints for the parameters of the medium. The exact balance between the dispersion/diffraction, nonlinearity and the gain/loss produces self-similar waves (similaritons). As an example, we investigate the nonlinear tunneling effect of flat-top similariton. The results show that the effects of dispersion barrier and well for the similariton are similar to that of nonlinear well and barrier, respectively. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.