We obtain exact traveling wave and spatiotemporal soliton solutions to the generalized (3+1)-dimensional nonlinear Schrödinger equation with variable coefficients and polynomial Kerr nonlinearity of an arbitrarily high order. Exact solutions, given in terms of Jacobi elliptic functions, are presented for the special cases of cubic-quintic and septic models. We demonstrate that the widely used method for finding exact solutions in terms of Jacobi elliptic functions is not applicable to the nonlinear Schrödinger equation with saturable nonlinearity.

• Received 27 October 2010

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.83.026604