2012/02/29 by Vassos Achilleos, V. Achilleos, P. G. Kevrekidis +2 · 4 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Mathematical physics #Mechanics #Nonlinear Photonic Systems #Nonlinear Waves and Solitons #Nonlinear system #Physics #Quantum Mechanics and Non-Hermitian Physics #Quantum mechanics #Vortex #cond-mat.soft #nlin.PS
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreva.86.013808
published as Phys. Rev. A 86 (2012) 013808 · 8 pages, 8 figures
arxiv created 2012/05/10 · openalex publication_date 2012/07/06 · arxiv updated 2014/12/03 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We consider nonlinear analogs of parity-time- (PT-) symmetric linear systems exhibiting defocusing nonlinearities. We study the ground state and odd excited states (dark solitons and vortices) of the system and report the following remarkable features. For relatively weak values of the parameter \ensuremathε controlling the strength of the PT-symmetric potential, excited states undergo (analytically tractable) spontaneous symmetry breaking; as \ensuremathε is further increased, the ground state and first excited state, as well as branches of higher multisoliton (multivortex) states, collide in pairs and disappear in blue-sky bifurcations, in a way which is strongly reminiscent of the linear PT phase transition---thus termed the nonlinear PT phase transition. Past this critical point, initialization of, e.g., the former ground state, leads to spontaneously emerging solitons and vortices.