Fractional Optical Solitons and Fractional Noether’s Theorem with Ortigueira’s Centered Derivatives

Abstract

This paper shows that the centered fractional derivatives introduced by Manuel Duarte Ortigueira in 2006 are useful in the description of optical solitons. It is shown that we can construct a fractional extension of the nonlinear Schr ö dinger (NLS) equation which incorporates Ortigueira’s derivatives and has soliton solutions. It is also shown that this fractional NLS equation has a Lagrangian density and can be derived from a variational principle. Finally, a fractional extension of Noether’s theorem is formulated to determine the conserved quantities associated to the invariances of the action integral under infinitesimal transformations.