Existence and stability of modulating pulse solutions in Maxwell's equations describing nonlinear optics (Q1412071)

The authors rigorously prove existence and stability of localized optical pulses in Maxwell's equation with a nonlinear polarization and complex susceptibility. Under certain assumptions, the evolution of long-wavelength modulations of wave packets is formally governed by a complex cubic-quintic Ginzburg-Landau equation, which possesses an asymptotically stable two parameter family of pulses. The authors show that this family of pulses persist as a modulated pulse, with a long-wavelength envelope propagating with an average speed close to the group velocity of the underlying wave package, and periodically modulated with the corresponding frequency of the wave packet in the comoving frame. The two-parameter family is induced by spatio-temporal translations, corresponding to translation and gauge symmetry in the Ginzburg-Landau equation. Moreover, the authors show that the spectral stability of the Ginzburg-Landau pulse persists in the (damped) Maxwell equation and move on to show exponential convergence to the pulse of solutions which are sufficiently close.