Localized Optical Vortex Solitons in Pair Plasmas

The dynamics of short intense electromagnetic pulses propagating in a relativistic pair plasma with small temperature asymmetry is of current interest. Such pulses were shown to be governed by a nonlinear Schrodinger equation with a new type of focusing-defocusing nonlinearity. We provide an existence theory and numerical analysis for a special class of solutions, known as "ring-profiled" optical vortex solitons. Our methods include both a direct and constrained minimization. We give a necessary condition for the existence of nontrivial solutions and a series of interesting estimates in terms of the relevant parameters describing the electromagnetic pulse. Additionally, we use the constrained minimization approach and a finite element formalism to numerically study the behavior of the profiles of soliton solutions.