1D solitons in cubic-quintic fractional nonlinear Schrödinger model

Abstract

Abstract We examine the properties of a soliton solution of the fractional Schrö dinger equation with cubic-quintic nonlinearity. Using analytical (variational) and numerical arguments, we have shown that the substitution of the ordinary Laplacian in the Schrödinger equation by its fractional counterpart with Lévy index $$\alpha$$ α permits to stabilize the soliton texture in the wide range of its parameters (nonlinearity coefficients and $$\alpha$$ α ) values. Our studies of $$\omega (N)$$ ω ( N ) dependence ( $$\omega$$ ω is soliton frequency and N its norm) permit to acquire the regions of existence and stability of the fractional soliton solution. For that we use famous Vakhitov-Kolokolov (VK) criterion. The variational results are confirmed by numerical solution of a one-dimensional cubic-quintic nonlinear Schrödinger equation. Direct numerical simulations of the linear stability problem of soliton texture gives the same soliton stability boundary as within variational method. Thus we confirm that simple variational approach combined with VK criterion gives reliable information about soliton structure and stability in our model. Our results may be relevant to both optical solitons and Bose-Einstein condensates in cold atomic gases.