Two-dimensional solitons in media with stripe-shaped nonlinearity modulation

We introduce a model of media with the cubic attractive nonlinearity concentrated along a single or double stripe in the two-dimensional (2D) plane. The model can be realized in terms of nonlinear optics (in the spatial and temporal domains alike) and BEC. It is known from recent works that search for stable 2D solitons in models with a spatially localized self-attractive nonlinearity is a challenging problem. We make use of the variational approximation (VA) and numerical methods to investigate conditions for the existence and stability of solitons in the present setting. The result crucially depends on the transverse shape of the stripe: while the rectangular profile supports stable 2D solitons, its smooth Gaussian-shaped counterpart makes all the solitons unstable. This difference is explained, in particular, by the VA. The double stripe with the rectangular profile admits stable solitons of three distinct types: symmetric and asymmetric ones with a single-peak, and double-peak symmetric solitons. The shape and stability of the single-peak solitons of either type are accurately predicted by the VA. Collisions between identical stable solitons are briefly considered too, by means of direct simulations. Depending on the collision velocity, we observe excitation of intrinsic oscillations of the solitons, or their decay, or the collapse (catastrophic self-focusing).