Collapse of solitary waves near transition from supercritical to subcritical bifurcations

Abstract

We study both analytically and numerically the nonlinear stage of the instability of one-dimensional solitons in a small vicinity of the transition point from supercritical to subcritical bifurcations in the framework of the generalized nonlinear Schr\"{o}dinger equation. It is shown that near the collapsing time the pulse amplitude and its width demonstrate the self-similar behavior with a small asymmetry at the pulse tails due to self-steepening. This theory is applied to both solitary interfacial deep-water waves and envelope water waves with a finite depth and short optical pulses in fibers as well.