Conservation laws, exact traveling waves and modulation instability for an extended nonlinear Schrödinger equation

We study various properties of solutions of an extended nonlinear Schrödinger (ENLS) equation, which arises in the context of geometric evolution problems—including vortex filament dynamics—and governs propagation of short pulses in optical fibers and nonlinear metamaterials. For the periodic initial-boundary value problem, we derive conservation laws satisfied by local in time, weak H² (distributional) solutions, and establish global existence of such weak solutions. The derivation is obtained by a regularization scheme under a balance condition on the coefficients of the linear and nonlinear terms—namely, the Hirota limit of the considered ENLS model. Next, we investigate conditions for the existence of traveling wave solutions, focusing on the case of bright and dark solitons. The balance condition on the coefficients is found to be essential for the existence of exact analytical soliton solutions; furthermore, we obtain conditions which define parameter regimes for the existence of traveling solitons for various linear dispersion strengths. Finally, we study the modulational instability of plane waves of the ENLS equation, and identify important differences between the ENLS case and the corresponding NLS counterpart. The analytical results are corroborated by numerical simulations, which reveal notable differences between the bright and the dark soliton propagation dynamics, and are in excellent agreement with the analytical predictions of the modulation instability analysis. (paper)