Stability of multipole-mode solitons in thermal nonlinear media

We study the stability of multipole-mode solitons in one-dimensional thermal nonlinear media. We show how the sample geometry impacts the stability of multipole-mode solitons and reveals that the tripole and quadrupole can be made stable in their whole domain of existence, provided that the sample width exceeds a critical value. In spite of such geometry-dependent soliton stability, we find that the maximal number of peaks in stable multipole-mode solitons in thermal media is the same as that in nonlinear materials with finite-range nonlocality. ©2010 The American Physical Society