Engineerable generation of quadratic solitons in synthetic phase matching.
We show that the efficiency and the mismatch bandwidth of quadratic soliton formation under conditions of second-harmonic generation can be enhanced in an important way in synthetic phase-matching profiles. Soliton excitation in smooth but arbitrary profiles is shown to be well described by a reduced variational approach. The potential of abrupt, nonadiabatic profiles for improved soliton formation is numerically revealed.