A survey of embedded solitons

Abstract

At the end of the nineties a brand-new type of soliton was discovered: the embedded solitons. Initially they were found in optical systems, and afterwards they were also found in hydrodynamic models, liquid crystal theory and discrete systems. These peculiar solitary waves are interesting because they exist under conditions in which, until recently, the propagation of solitons was thought to be impossible. At first these nonlinear waves were believed to be necessarily isolated and unstable, but later on it was found that they can be stable and may exist in families. This paper explains what these embedded solitons are, in which models they have been found, and what variants exist (stable, unstable, continuous, discrete, etc.).