Collapse of solitary waves near transition from supercritical to subcritical bifurcations

We study both analytically and numerically the nonlinear stage of the instability of one-dimensional solitons in a small vicinity of the transition point from supercritical to subcritical bifurcations in the framework of the generalized nonlinear Schrödinger equation. It is shown that near the collapsing time the pulse amplitude and its width demonstrate the self-similar behavior with a small asymmetry at the pulse tails due to self-steepening. This theory is applied to both solitary interfacial deep-water waves and envelope water waves with a finite depth and short optical pulses in fibers as well.