Propagation of solitary pulses in optical fibers with both self-steepening and quintic nonlinear effects

Pulse dynamics and stability in optical fibers in the presence of both self-steepening and quintic nonlinear effects are analyzed. Propagating profiles of the quintic derivative nonlinear Schrödinger model are isolated via two invariants of motion. The resulting canonical equation admits exact periodic propagating patterns in terms of the Jacobi elliptic functions, and solitary pulses are recovered in the long wave limit, i.e. degenerate cases of periodic profiles where each pulse is widely separated from the adjacent ones. Two families of such exact wave profiles are identified. The first one has a precise constraint concerning the magnitude of self-steepening and quintic nonlinear effects, while the second one permits more freedom. The reduction to the well established temporal soliton in an optical fiber waveguide in the absence of self-steepening and quintic nonlinearity is demonstrated explicitly. Numerical simulations are performed to identify regimes of parameter values where robust propagation patterns exist. © 2014 Chinese Physical Society and IOP Publishing Ltd.