Stabilization of solitons under competing nonlinearities by external potentials

Abstract: We report results of the analysis for families of one-dimensional (1D) trapped solitons, created by competing self-focusing (SF) quintic and self-defocusing (SDF) cubic nonlinear terms. Two trapping potentials are considered, the harmonic-oscillator (HO) and delta-functional ones. The models apply to optical solitons in colloidal waveguides and other photonic media, and to matter-wave solitons in Bose-Einstein condensates (BEC) loaded into a quasi-1D trap. For the HO potential, the results are obtained in an approximate form, using the variational and Thomas-Fermi approximations (VA and TFA), and in a full numerical form, including the ground state and the first antisymmetric excited one. For the delta-functional attractive potential, the results are produced in a fully analytical form, and verified by means of numerical methods. Both exponentially localized solitons and weakly localized trapped modes are found for the delta-functional potential. The most essential conclusions concern the applicability of competing Vakhitov-Kolokolov (VK) and anti-VK criteria to the identification of the stability of solitons created under the action of the competing SF and SDF terms.