Symmetry breaking is reported for continuous families of solitons in the nonlinear Schrödinger equation with a two-dimensional complex potential. This symmetry breaking is forbidden in generic complex potentials. However, for a special class of partially parity-time-symmetric potentials, it is allowed. At the bifurcation point, two branches of asymmetric solitons bifurcate out from the base branch of symmetry-unbroken solitons. Stability of these solitons near the bifurcation point are also studied, and two novel properties for the bifurcated asymmetric solitons are revealed. One is that at the bifurcation point, zero and simple imaginary linear-stability eigenvalues of asymmetric solitons can move directly into the complex plane and create oscillatory instability. The other is that the two bifurcated asymmetric solitons, even though having identical powers and being related to each other by spatial mirror reflection, can possess different types of unstable eigenvalues and thus exhibit nonreciprocal nonlinear evolutions under random-noise perturbations.

• Received 8 October 2014

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.91.023201