INELASTICITY OF SOLITON COLLISIONS IN SYSTEMS OF COUPLED NLS EQUATIONS

Movatived by a problem of the dynamical elasticity of crystals with mi crostructure, a conservative numerical scheme is employed to study the very long time evolution and interaction of soliton-like solutions in systems of Coupled Nonlinear Schrodinger Equations. Head-on collision and overtaking receive special attention. The results obtained demons trate the inelasticity (change of polarization) of the interaction eve n for initially circularly polarized components. Thus it may be said t hat the interactions in such systems break the symmetry of the input.