Self-similar optical pulses in competing cubic-quintic nonlinear media with distributed coefficients

Abstract

We present a systematic analysis of the self-similar propagation of optical pulses within the framework of the generalized cubic-quintic nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation with distributed coefficients. By appropriately choosing the relations between the distributed coefficients, we not only retrieve the exact self-similar solitonic solutions, but also find both the approximate self-similar Gaussian-Hermite solutions and compact solutions. Our analytical and numerical considerations reveal that proper choices of the distributed coefficients could make the unstable solitons stable and could restrict the nonlinear interaction between the neighboring solitons.