Vortex solitons: Old results and new perspectives

Abstract

A review is given of some well-known and some recent results for two- and three-dimensional (2D and 3D) solitons, with emphasis on states carrying embedded vorticity. Unlike typically stable 1D solitons, 2D and 3D ones are vulnerable to instabilities induced by the critical and supercritical collapse, respectively, in the 2D and 3D models with cubic focusing nonlinearity. Vortex solitons are subject to a still stronger splitting instability. For this reason, a central problem is looking for physical settings in which 2D and 3D solitons may be stabilized. The review addresses, first, two well-established topics, viz., the stabilization of vortex solitons by means of competing nonlinearities, or by trapping potentials (harmonic-oscillator and spatially-periodic ones). The former topic includes a new addition, viz., the prediction of robust quantum droplets. Two other topics outline new schemes elaborated for the creation of stable vortical solitons. One scheme relies on the use of spin-orbit coupling (SOC) in binary BEC, making it possible to predict stable 2D and 3D solitons, which couple or mix components with vorticities S=0 and (+/-)1 (semi-vortices (SVs) or mixed modes (MMs), respectively). In this system, the situation is different in the 2D and 3D geometries. In 2D, SOC helps to create a ground state (GS), represented by stable SV or MM solitons, whose norm falls below the threshold value at which the critical collapse sets in. In the 3D geometry, the supercritical collapse does not allow one to create a GS, but metastable solitons of the SV and MM types can be constructed. Another new scheme makes it possible to create stable 2D vortex-ring solitons with arbitrarily high S in a binary BEC with components coupled by microwave radiation. Some other topics are addressed too, such as vortex solitons in dissipative media and attempts to create vortex solitons in experiments.