NLSE: A Python package to solve the nonlinear Schrödinger equation

Abstract

The nonlinear Schrödinger equation (NLSE) is a general nonlinear equation used to model the propagation of light in nonlinear media. This equation is mathematically isomorphic to the Gross-Pitaevskii equation (GPE) (Pitaevskij & Stringari, 2016) describing the evolution of cold atomic ensembles. Recently, the growing field of quantum fluids of light (Carusotto & Ciuti, 2013) has proven a fruitful testbed for several fundamental quantum and classical phenomena such as superfluidity (Michel et al., 2018) or turbulence (Baker-Rasooli et al., 2023). Providing a flexible, modern and performant framework to solve these equations is crucial to model realistic experimental scenarios.