Symmetry breaking with opposite stability between bifurcated asymmetric solitons in parity-time-symmetric potentials

Abstract: We report a new type of symmetry-breaking bifurcation of solitons in optical systems with parity-time-symmetric potentials. In this bifurcation, the two bifurcated branches of asymmetric solitons exhibit opposite stability, which contrasts all previous symmetry-breaking bifurcations in conservative and non-conservative systems. We show that this novel symmetry-breaking bifurcation can be exploited to achieve unidirectional propagation of high-intensity light beams in parity-time-symmetric potentials.