Incoherently coupled Hermite–Gaussian breather and soliton pairs in strongly nonlocal nonlinear media

Abstract

We theoretically investigate the propagation of incoherently coupled Hermite–Gaussian breather and soliton pairs in strongly nonlocal nonlinear media. It is found that multipole-mode soliton pairs with arbitrary different orders of Hermite–Gaussian shape can exist when the total power of two beams equals the critical power and the ratio of the beam widths for the Gaussian part is inversely proportional to the square root of the ratio of the wave numbers. When the total power does not equal the critical power, the Hermite–Gaussian breather pair exists and their beam widths evolve analogously. For general cases where the ratio of the beam widths is arbitrary, soliton–breather pairs or breather–breather pairs can be formed and their beam widths evolve synchronously in-phase or out-of-phase. Numerical simulations directly based on the nonlocal nonlinear Schrödinger equation are conducted for comparison with our theoretical predictions. The numerical stability analysis shows the higher-order Hermite–Gaussian solitons can not be stable for small nonlocality or for some media like liquid crystals.