Formation of fundamental solitons in the two-dimensional nonlinear Schrödinger equation with a lattice potential

We consider self-trapping of 2D solitons in the model based on the Gross-Pitaevskii/nonlinear Schrödinger equation with the self-attractive cubic nonlinearity and a periodic potential of the optical-lattice (OL) type. It is known that this model may suppress the collapse, giving rise to a family of stable fundamental solitons. Here, we report essential dynamical features of self-trapping of the fundamental solitons from input configurations of two types, with vorticity 0 or 1. We identify regions in the respective parameter spaces corresponding to the formation of the soliton, collapse, and decay. A noteworthy result is the self-trapping of stable fundamental solitons in cases when the input norm essentially exceeds the collapse threshold. We also compare predictions of the dynamical variational approximation with direct numerical simulations.