Small-amplitude nonlinear modes under the combined effect of the parabolic potential, nonlocality and ${\cal PT}$ symmetry

Abstract

We consider nonlinear modes of the nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation with a nonlocal nonlinearity and an additional PT-symmetric parabolic potential. We show that there exists a set of continuous families of nonlinear modes and study their linear stability in the limit of small nonlinearity. It is demonstrated that either PT symmetry or the nonlocality can be used to manage the stability of the small-amplitude nonlinear modes. The stability properties are also found to depend on the particular shape of the nonlocal kernel. Additional numerical simulations show that the stability results remain valid not only for the infinitesimally small nonlinear modes, but also for the modes of finite amplitude