Symmetry breaking of solitons in the PT-symmetric nonlinear Schrodinger equation with the cubic-quintic competing saturable nonlinearity

The symmetry breaking of solitons in the nonlinear Schrodinger equation with cubic-quintic competing nonlinearity and parity-time symmetric potential is studied. At first, a new asymmetric branch separates from the fundamental symmetric soliton at the first power critical point, and then, the asymmetric branch passes through the branch of the fundamental symmetric soliton and finally merges into the branch of the fundamental symmetric soliton at the second power critical point, while the power of the soliton increases. This leads to the symmetry breaking and double-loop bifurcation of fundamental symmetric solitons. From the power-propagation constant curves of solitons, symmetric fundamental and tripole solitons, asymmetric solitons can also exist. The stability of symmetric fundamental solitons, asymmetric solitons, and symmetric tripole solitons is discussed by the linear stability analysis and direct simulation. Results indicate that symmetric fundamental solitons and symmetric tripole solitons tend to be stable with the increase in the soliton power. Asymmetric solitons are unstable in both high and low power regions. Moreover, with the increase in saturable nonlinearity, the stability region of fundamental symmetric solitons and symmetric tripole solitons becomes wider. Published under an exclusive license by AIP Publishing.

Automated summary

The symmetry breaking of solitons in the nonlinear Schrodinger equation with cubic-quintic competing nonlinearity and parity-time symmetric potential is studied. It is found that symmetric fundamental solitons and symmetric tripole solitons tend to be stable, while asymmetric solitons are unstable in both high and low power regions. Increasing saturable nonlinearity widens the stability region of fundamental symmetric solitons and symmetric tripole solitons.