Stationary nonlinear waves, superposition modes and modulational instability characteristics in the AB system

We study the AB system describing marginally unstable baroclinic wave packets in geophysical fluids and also ultra-short pulses in nonlinear optics. We show that the breather can be converted into different types of stationary nonlinear waves on constant backgrounds, including the multi-peak soliton, M-shaped soliton, W-shaped soliton and periodic wave. We also investigate the nonlinear interactions between these waves, which display some novel patterns due to the non-propagating characteristics of the solitons: (1) Two antidark solitons can produce a W-shaped soliton instead of a higher-order antidark one, (2) The interaction between an antidark soliton and a W-shaped soliton can not only generate a higher-order antidark soliton, but also form a W-shaped solion pair, (3) The interactions between an oscillation W-shaped soliton and an oscillation M-shaped soliton show the multipeak structures. We find that the transition occurs at a modulational stability region in a low perturbation frequency region.