One- and two-dimensional solitons under the action of the inverted cubic-quintic nonlinearity

The usual cubic-quintic (CQ) nonlinearity is proved to sustain one- and two-dimensional (1D and 2D) broad (flat-top) solitons. In this work, we demonstrate that 1D and 2D soliton families can be supported, in the semi-infinite bandgap (SIBG), by the interplay of a lattice potential and the nonlinearity including self-defocusing cubic and self-focusing quintic terms, with the sign combination inverted with respect to the usual CQ nonlinearity. The families include fundamental and dipole solitons in 1D, and fundamental, quadrupole, and vortex solitons in 2D. The power, shapes, and stability of the solitons are reported. The results are strongly affected by the positions of the solitons in SIBG, the families being unstable very close to or very far from the SIBG’s edge. The inverted CQ nonlinearity, considered in this work, sustains sharp 1D and 2D stable solitons, which can be naturally used as bit pixels in photonic data-processing applications. In nonlinear optics, the interplay of lattice potentials and nonlinearity can support soliton formation, yet the effects of inverted cubic-quintic terms remain underexplored. The authors demonstrate that this inverted setting supports stable, sharp solitons in one and two dimensions, offering potential applications as bit pixels in photonic data processing.