Symmetry breaking and multipeaked solitons in inhomogeneous gain landscapes
We address one-dimensional soliton formation in a cubic nonlinear medium with two-photon absorption and transversally inhomogeneous gain landscape consisting of a single or several amplifying channels. Existence of the solitons requires certain threshold gain while the properties of solitons strongly depend on whether the number of the amplifying channels is odd or even. In the former case, an increase of the gain leads to symmetry breaking, which occurs through the pitchfork bifurcation, and to emergence of a single or several coexisting stable asymmetric modes. In the case of an even number of amplifying channels, we have found only asymmetric stable states.