Solitons in a nonlinear Schrodinger equation with PT-symmetric potentials and inhomogeneous nonlinearity: stability and excitation of nonlinear modes

Abstract: We report branches of explicit expressions for nonlinear modes in parity-time (PT) symmetric potentials of several types. For the single-well and double-well potentials the found solutions are two-parametric and appear to be stable even when the PT-symmetry of respective underlying linear models is broken. Based on the examples of these solutions we describe an algorithm of excitation of a stable nonlinear mode in a model, whose linear limit is unstable. The method is based on the adiabatic change of the control parameter driving the mode along a branch bifurcating from a stable linear mode. The suggested algorithm is confirmed by extensive numerical simulations.