Stable two-dimensional solitons supported by radially inhomogeneous self-focusing nonlinearity

We demonstrate that modulation of the local strength of the cubic self-focusing (SF) nonlinearity in the two-dimensional geometry, in the form of a circle with contrast Delta g of the SF coefficient relative to the ambient medium with a weaker nonlinearity, stabilizes a family of fundamental solitons against the critical collapse. The result is obtained in an analytical form, using the variational approximation and Vakhitov-Kolokolov stability criterion, and corroborated by numerical computations. For the small contrast, the stability interval of the soliton's norm scales as Delta N similar to Delta g (the replacement of the circle by an annulus leads to a reduction of the stability region by perturbations breaking the axial symmetry). To further illustrate this mechanism, we demonstrate, in an exact form, the stabilization of one-dimensional solitons against the critical collapse under the action of a locally enhanced quintic SF nonlinearity. (C) 2012 Optical Society of America