Superpositions of bright and dark solitons supporting the creation of balanced gain and loss optical potentials

Abstract

Bright and dark solitons of the cubic nonlinear Schrodinger equation are used to construct complex-valued potentials with all-real spectrum. The real part of these potentials is equal to the intensity of a bright soliton while their imaginary part is defined by the product of such soliton with its concomitant, a dark soliton. Considering light propagation in Kerr media, the real part of the potential refers to the self-focusing of the signal and the imaginary one provides the system with balanced gain-and-loss rates.