Akhmediev breathers, Ma solitons, and general breathers from rogue waves: a case study in the Manakov system

We present explicit forms of general breather (GB), Akhmediev breather (AB), Ma soliton (MS), and rogue wave (RW) solutions of the two-component nonlinear Schrödinger (NLS) equation, namely Manakov equation. We derive these solutions through two different routes. In the forward route, we first construct a suitable periodic envelope soliton solution to this model from which we derive GB, AB, MS, and RW solutions. We then consider the RW solution as the starting point and derive AB, MS, and GB in the reverse direction. The second approach has not been illustrated so far for the two component NLS equation. Our results show that the above rational solutions of the Manakov system can be derived from the standard scalar nonlinear Schrödinger equation with a modified nonlinearity parameter. Through this two-way approach we establish a broader understanding of these rational solutions, which will be of interest in a variety of situations.