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Symmetry breaking and restoration of symmetric solitons in partially parity-time-symmetric potentials

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Abstract

We address the symmetry-breaking bifurcation of optical solitons in cubic–quintic media with an imprinted partially parity-time-symmetric potential. An increase in soliton power leads to symmetry breaking, which occurs through a pitchfork bifurcation. In contrast to all previously reported symmetry breaking, restoring bifurcation occurs when soliton power exceeds another critical value. Symmetry-breaking region between symmetry-breaking point and restoration point shrinks with the growth of the strength of quintic nonlinearity. While the base branch of solitons loses their stabilities in the symmetry-breaking region, the stabilities of two branches of bifurcated asymmetric solitons respecting mirror symmetry are opposite. Nonreciprocal propagation of unstable asymmetric solitons is also observed. We thus put forward the first example of restoring bifurcation of symmetric solitons in two dimensions.

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Acknowledgements

This work is supported by Natural Science Basic Research Plan in Shaanxi Province of China (Program No. 2019JM-307) and National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (Granted No. 11374268, 11704339).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Physics, Shaanxi University of Science & Technology, Xi’an, 710021, China

    Liangwei Dong & Wei Qi

  2. Institute of Theoretical Physics, Shaanxi University of Science & Technology, Xi’an, 710021, China

    Liangwei Dong

  3. Department of Electronic Information and Physics, Changzhi University, Changzhi, 046011, Shanxi, China

    Changming Huang

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  1. Liangwei Dong
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  2. Changming Huang
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Correspondence to Liangwei Dong.

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Dong, L., Huang, C. & Qi, W. Symmetry breaking and restoration of symmetric solitons in partially parity-time-symmetric potentials. Nonlinear Dyn 98, 1701–1708 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11071-019-05280-3

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