Analytical theory for dark soliton interaction in nonlocal nonlinear materials with arbitrary degree of nonlocality

TL;DR

This paper develops an analytical framework to understand how dark solitons interact in nonlocal nonlinear materials, revealing that nonlocality can induce attractive forces between solitons.

Contribution

It provides an analytical theory for dark soliton interactions in nonlocal media with arbitrary nonlocality degree, using variational methods.

Findings

Nonlocality induces attractive forces between dark solitons.

The interaction can be controlled by the degree of nonlocality.

Analytical results match numerical simulations.

Abstract

We investigate theoretically the interaction of dark solitons in materials with a spatially nonlocal nonlinearity. In particular we do this analytically and for arbitrary degree of nonlocality. We employ the variational technique to show that nonlocality induces an attractive force in the otherwise repulsive soliton interaction.