A ug 1 99 7 An energy conserving finite - difference model of Maxwell ’ s equations for soliton propagation

We present an energy conserving leapfrog finite-difference scheme for the nonlinear Maxwell's equations investigated The model describes one-dimensional scalar optical soliton propagation in polarization preserving nonlinear dispersive media. The existence of a discrete analog of the underlying continuous energy conservation law plays a central role in the global accuracy of the scheme and a proof of its generalized nonlinear stability using energy methods is given. Numerical simulations of initial fundamental, second and third-order hyperbolic secant soliton pulses of fixed spatial full width at half peak intensity containing as few as 4 and 8 optical carrier wavelengths, confirm the stability, accuracy and efficiency of the algorithm. The effect of a retarded nonlinear response time of the media modeling Raman scattering is under current investigation in this context.