An overview of recent results in the field of vortex (spinning) solitons and soliton complexes composed of several fundamental (nonspinning) solitons in twoand three-dimensional optical media with competing nonlinearities is presented. It is concluded that multidimensional solitons with intrinsic topological charge are stable provided that their internal size and power (energy) are large enough...

We study two-component spatial optical solitons carrying an angular momentum and propagating in a self-focusing saturable nonlinear medium. When one of the components is small, such vector solitons can be viewed as a self-trapped vortex beam that guides either the fundamental or first-order guided mode, and they are classified as single- and double-vortex vector solitons. For such composite vor...

We study the dynamics of bright solitons formed in a Bose-Einstein condensate with attractive atomic interactions perturbed by a weak bichromatic optical lattice potential. The lattice depth is a biperiodic function of time with a zero mean, which realizes a flashing ratchet for matter-wave solitons. We find that the average velocity of a soliton and the soliton current induced by the ratchet d...

The effect of polarization mode dispersion (PMD) on Manakov solitons and dispersion managed solitons is treated analytically and by numerical simulation. In the analytic approach the internal motion of the Manakov soliton is represented as a damped harmonic oscillator. The PMD functions as a white noise source driving the oscillations. It is shown that the solitons can withstand PMD up to a cer...

Elliptical solitons in 2D nonlinear Schödinger equations are studied numerically with a more-generalized formulation. New families of solitons, vortices, and soliton rings with elliptical symmetry are found and investigated. With a suitable symmetry-breaking parameter, we show that perturbed elliptical solitons tend to move transversely owing to the existences of dipole excitation modes, which ...

We study numerically a parametrically driven discrete nonlinear Schrödinger equation modeling periodically curved waveguide arrays. We show that discrete surface solitons persist, but their threshold power is altered by the drive. There are critical drives at which the threshold values vanish. We also show that parametric drives can create resonance with a phonon making a barrier for discrete s...

We resolve a controversial issue of the stability of composite vortex solitons in self-focusing saturable nonlinear media. Stable vortex solitons with hidden angular momentum, i.e., composed of counter-rotating beams with topological charges +1 and −1, are found, and their linear-stability region is identified. In contrast, the solitons with explicit vorticity are always unstable against splitt...

We elucidate the properties of mixed-gap vector surface solitons supported by the interface between a uniform medium and an optical lattice imprinted in a Kerr-type nonlinear medium. The components of such mixed-gap solitons emerge from different gaps of lattice spectrum and their mutual trapping results in the formation of stable vector states. The unstable soliton component is stabilized by t...

We consider the discrete solitons bifurcating from the anti-continuum limit of the discrete nonlinear Schrödinger (NLS) lattice. The discrete soliton in the anti-continuum limit represents an arbitrary finite superposition of in-phase or anti-phase excited nodes, separated by an arbitrary sequence of empty nodes. By using stability analysis, we prove that the discrete solitons are all unstable ...

In certain field theoretical models, composite solitons consisting of a domain wall and vortex lines attached to the wall have been referred to as 'D-brane solitons'. We show that similar composite solitons can be realized in phase-separated two-component Bose-Einstein condensates. We discuss the similarities and differences between topological solitons in the Abelian-Higgs model and those in t...