  It is well known that typical PT-symmetric systems suffer symmetry breaking
when the strength of the gain-loss terms exceeds a certain critical value. We
present a summary of recently published and newly produced results which
demonstrate various possibilities of extending the PT symmetry to arbitrarily
large values of the gain-loss coefficient. First, we recapitulate the analysis
which demonstrates a possibility of the restoration of the PT symmetry and,
moreover, complete avoidance of the breaking in a photonic waveguide of a
subwavelength width. The analysis is based on the Maxwell's equations, instead
of the usual paraxial approximation. Next, we review a recently proposed
possibility to construct stable one-dimensional (1D) PT-symmetric solitons in a
paraxial model with arbitrarily large values of the gain-loss coefficient,
provided that the self-trapping of the solitons is induced by self-defocusing
cubic nonlinearity, whose local strength grows sufficiently fast from the
center to periphery. The model admits a particular analytical solution for the
fundamental soliton, and provides full stability for families of fundamental
and dipole solitons. Finally, we report new results for unbreakable
PT-symmetric solitons in 2D extensions of the 1D model: one with a quasi-1D
modulation profile of the local gain-loss coefficient, and another with the
fully-2D modulation. These settings admit particular analytical solutions for
2D solitons, while generic soliton families are found in a numerical form. The
quasi-1D modulation profile gives rise to a stable family of single-peak 2D
solitons. The soliton stability in the full 2D model is possible if the local
gain-loss term is subject to spatial confinement.
