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Soliton

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In mathematics and physics, a soliton is a self-reinforcing solitary wave caused by a delicate balance between nonlinear and dispersive effects in the medium. Solitons are found in many physical phenomena, as they arise as the solutions of a widespread class of weakly nonlinear dispersive partial differential equations describing physical systems. The soliton phenomenon was first described by John Scott Russell (1808-1882) who observed a solitary wave in the Union Canal, reproduced the phenomenon in a wave tank, and named it the "Wave of Translation".

It is not easy to define precisely what a soliton is. Drazin and Johnson (1989) describe solitons as solutions of nonlinear differential equations which

  1. represent waves of permanent form;
  2. are localised, so that they decay or approach a constant at infinity;
  3. can interact strongly with other solitons, but they emerge from the collision unchanged apart from a phase shift.
More formal definitions exist, but they require substantial mathematics. On the other hand, some scientists use the term soliton for phenomena that do not quite have these three properties (for instance, the 'light bullets' of nonlinear optics are often called solitons despite losing energy during interaction).

Many exactly solvable models have soliton solutions, including the Korteweg-de Vries equation, the nonlinear Schrödinger equation, the coupled nonlinear Schrödinger equation, and the sine-Gordon equation. The soliton solutions are typically obtained by means of the inverse scattering transform. The mathematical theory of these equations is a broad and very active field of mathematical research.

Some types of tidal bore, a wave phenomenon of a few rivers including the River Severn, are 'undular': a wavefront followed by a train of solitons. Other solitons occur as the undersea internal waves, initiated by seabed topography, that propagate on the oceanic pycnocline. Atmospheric solitons also exist, such as the Morning Glory Cloud of the Gulf of Carpentaria, where pressure solitons travelling in a temperature inversion layer produce vast linear roll clouds.

In a broader sense, solitons belong to a class of phenomomena known as topological defects or topological solitons. These are a generalization of the notion of a soliton to any solution of a set of partial differential equations that is stable against decay to the "trivial solution" due to topological constraints. The constraint arises almost always because the differential equations must obey a set of boundary conditions, and the boundary has a non-trivial homotopy group, preserved by the differential equations. Thus, the solutions of the differential equations can be classified into homotopy classes. There is no continuous transformation that will map a solution in one homotopy class to another; thus the solutions are truly distinct, and maintain their integrity, even in the face of extremely powerful forces. Examples of topological solitons include the screw dislocation in a crystalline lattice, the Dirac string and the magnetic monopole in electromagnetism, the Skyrmion and the Wess-Zumino-Witten model in quantum field theory, and cosmic strings and domain walls in cosmology.

Contents

History

In 1834, John Scott Russell describes his wave of translation.

In 1965 N.J. Zabusky of Bell Labs and M.D. Kruskal of Princeton University first demonstrated soliton behaviour in media subject to the Korteweg-de Vries equation (KdV equation) in a computational investigation using a finite difference approach.

In 1967, Gardner, Greene, Kruskal and Miura discovered an inverse scattering transform enabling analytical solution of the KdV equation. The work of Peter Lax on Lax pairs and the Lax equation has since extended this to solution of many related soliton-generating systems.

Solitons in fiber optics

In 1973, Akira Hasegawa of AT&T Bell Labs was the first to suggest that solitons could exist in optical fibers, due to a balance between self-phase modulation and anomalous dispersion. He also proposed the idea of a soliton-based transmission system to increase performance of optical telecommunications.

Solitons in a fiber optic system are described by the Manakov equations.

In 1987, P. Emplit, J.P. Hamaide, F. Reynaud, C. Froehly and A. Barthelemy, from the Universities of Brussels and Limoges, made the first experimental observation of the propagation of a dark soliton, in an optical fiber.

In 1988, Linn Mollenauer and his team transmitted soliton pulses over 4,000 kilometers using a phenomenon called the Raman effect, named for the Indian scientist Sir C. V. Raman who first described it in the 1920s, to provide optical gain in the fiber.

In 1991, a Bell Labs research team transmitted solitons error-free at 2.5 gigabits over more than 14,000 kilometers, using erbium optical fiber amplifiers (spliced-in segments of optical fiber containing the rare earth element erbium). Pump lasers, coupled to the optical amplifiers, activate the erbium, which energizes the light pulses.

In 1998, Thierry Georges and his team at France Télécom R&D Center, combining optical solitons of different wavelengths (wavelength division multiplexing), demonstrated a data transmission of 1 terabit per second (1,000,000,000,000 units of information per second).

In 2001, the practical use of solitons became a reality when Algety Telecom deployed submarine telecommunications equipment in Europe carrying real traffic using John Scott Russell's solitary wave.

See also

References

External links

 

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