Symmetry-breaking bifurcations and ghost states in the fractional nonlinear Schrödinger equation with a PT-symmetric potential

Abstract: We report symmetry-breaking and restoring bifurcations of solitons in a fractional Schr\"{o}dinger equation with the cubic or cubic-quintic (CQ) nonlinearity and a parity-time (PT)-symmetric potential, which may be realized in optical cavities. Solitons are destabilized at the bifurcation point, and, in the case of the CQ nonlinearity, the stability is restored by an inverse bifurcation. Two mutually-conjugate branches of ghost states (GSs), with complex propagation constants, are created by the bifurcation, solely in the case of the fractional diffraction. While GSs are not true solutions, direct simulations confirm that their shapes and results of their stability analysis provide a blueprint for the evolution of genuine localized modes in the system.