Localized waves in nonlinear oscillator chains

This paper reviews results about the existence of spatially localized waves in nonlinear chains of coupled oscillators, and provides new results for the Fermi-Pasta-Ulam (FPU) lattice. Localized solutions include solitary waves of permanent form and traveling breathers which appear time periodic in a system of reference moving at constant velocity. For FPU lattices we analyze the case when the breather period and the inverse velocity are commensurate. We employ a center manifold reduction method introduced by Iooss and Kirchgassner in the case of traveling waves, which reduces the problem locally to a finite dimensional reversible differential equation. The principal part of the reduced system is integrable and admits solutions homoclinic to quasi-periodic orbits if a hardening condition on the interaction potential is satisfied. These orbits correspond to approximate travelling breather solutions superposed on a quasi-periodic oscillatory tail. The problem of their persistence for the full system is still open in the general case. We solve this problem for an even potential if the breather period equals twice the inverse velocity, and prove in that case the existence of exact traveling breather solutions superposed on an exponentially small periodic tail.     

Asymptotic analysis of combined breather-kink modes in a Fermi-Pasta-Ulam chain

We find approximations to travelling breather solutions of the one-dimensional Fermi-Pasta-Ulam (FPU) lattice. Both bright breather and dark breather solutions are found. We find that the existence of localised (bright) solutions depends upon the coefficients of cubic and quartic terms of the potential energy, generalising an earlier inequality derived by James [G. James, Existence of breathers on FPU lattices, C. R. Acad. Sci. Paris 332 (2001) 581-586]. We use the method of multiple scales to reduce the equations of motion for the lattice to a nonlinear Schrödinger equation at leading order and hence construct an asymptotic form for the breather. We show that in the absence of a cubic potential energy term, the lattice supports combined breathing-kink waveforms. The amplitude of breathing-kinks can be arbitrarily small, as opposed to the case for traditional monotone kinks, which have a nonzero minimum amplitude in such systems. We also present numerical simulations of the lattice, verifying the shape and velocity of the travelling waveforms, and confirming the long-lived nature of all such modes.     

On the persistence of breathers at deep water

The long-time behavior of a perturbation to a uniform wavetrain of the compact Zakharov equation is studied near the modulational instability threshold. A multiple-scale analysis reveals that the perturbation evolves in accord with a focusing nonlinear Schrodinger equation for values of wave steepness μ < μ₁ ≈ 0.274. The long-time dynamics is characterized by interacting breathers, homoclinic orbits to an unstable wavetrain. The associated Benjamin-Feir index is a decreasing function of μ, and it vanishes at μ₁. Above this threshold, the perturbation dynamics is of defocusing type and breathers are suppressed. Thus, homoclinic orbits persist only for small values of wave steepness μ ? μ₁, in agreement with recent experimental and numerical observations of breathers.     

Standing wave instabilities, breather formation and thermalization in a Hamiltonian anharmonic lattice

Modulational instability of travelling plane waves is often considered as the first step in the formation of intrinsically localized modes (discrete breathers) in anharmonic lattices. Here, we consider an alternative mechanism for breather formation, originating in oscillatory instabilities of spatially periodic or quasiperiodic nonlinear standing waves (SWs). These SWs are constructed for Klein-Gordon or Discrete Nonlinear Schr?dinger lattices as exact time periodic and time reversible multibreather solutions from the limit of uncoupled oscillators, and merge into harmonic SWs in the small-amplitude limit. Approaching the linear limit, all SWs with nontrivial wave vectors (0 < Q < π) become unstable through oscillatory instabilities, persisting for arbitrarily small amplitudes in infinite lattices. The dynamics resulting from these instabilities is found to be qualitatively different for wave vectors smaller than or larger than π/2, respectively. In one regime persisting breathers are found, while in the other regime the system thermalizes. Received 6 October 2001 / Received in final form 1st March 2002 Published online 2 October 2002 RID="a" ID="a"e-mail: mjn@ifm.liu.se     

Melnikov Potential for Exact Symplectic Maps

The splitting of separatrices of hyperbolic fixed points for exact symplectic maps of n degrees of freedom is considered. The non-degenerate critical points of a real-valued function (called the Melnikov potential) are associated to transverse homoclinic orbits and an asymptotic expression for the symplectic area between homoclinic orbits is given. Moreover, if the unperturbed invariant manifolds are completely doubled, it is shown that there exist, in general, at least $4$ primary homoclinic orbits (4n in antisymmetric maps). Both lower bounds are optimal. Two examples are presented: a 2n-dimensional central standard-like map and the Hamiltonian map associated to a magnetized spherical pendulum. Several topics are studied about these examples: existence of splitting, explicit computations of Melnikov potentials, transverse homoclinic orbits, exponentially small splitting, etc. Received: 6 June 1996 / Accepted: 16 April 1997     

Superregular breathers and state transitions in a resonant erbium-doped fiber system with higher-order effects

In this paper, we concentrate on the Hirota and Maxwell-Bloch (HMB) system governing the propagation of the femtosecond pulse in an erbium doped fiber. We present the superregular breather solutions that are nonlinear superposition of a pair of travelling breathers propagating in opposite directions. We further study the full- and half-transition modes of the superregular breather solution, which appears as a result of the coupled and higher-order effects. These waves reduce to small localized perturbations of the background at time zero.     

Breather interactions and higher-order nonautonomous rogue waves for the inhomogeneous nonlinear Schrödinger Maxwell–Bloch equations

Under investigation in this paper are the inhomogeneous nonlinear Schrödinger Maxwell–Bloch (INLS-MB) equations which model the propagation of optical waves in an inhomogeneous nonlinear light guide doped with two-level resonant atoms. Higher-order nonautonomous breather as well as rogue wave solutions in terms of the determinants for the INLS-MB equations are presented via the n$n$-fold variable-coefficient modified Darboux transformation. The interactions among two nonautonomous breathers are graphically discussed, including the fundamental breather, bound breather, two-breather compression and two-breather evolution, etc. Moreover, several patterns of the higher-order rogue waves are also exhibited, such as the square rogue wave, two- and three-order periodic rogue waves, periodic fission and fusion, two-order stationary rogue waves, and recurrence of the two-order rogue waves. The character of the trajectory of the two-order periodic rogue wave is analyzed. Additionally, a novel type of interaction, namely, the collision between the breather and long-lived rogue waves, is found to be elastic. Our results could be useful for controlling the nonautonomous optical breathers and rogue waves in the inhomogeneous erbium doped fiber.     

Moving breather collisions in Klein-Gordon chains of oscillators

We investigate the collisions of moving breathers, with the same frequency, in three different Klein-Gordon chains of oscillators. The on-site potentials are: the asymmetric and soft Morse potential, the symmetric and soft sine-Gordon potential and the symmetric and hard φ⁴ potential. The simulation of a collision begins generating two identical moving breathers traveling with opposite velocities, they are obtained after perturbing two identical stationary breathers which centers are separated by a fixed number of particles. If this number is odd we obtain an on-site collision, but if this number is even we obtain an inter-site collision. Apart from this distinction, we have considered symmetric collisions, if the colliding moving breathers are vibrating in phase, and anti-symmetric collisions, if the colliding moving breathers are vibrating in anti-phase. The simulations show that the collision properties of the three chains are different. The main observed phenomena are: breather generation with trapping, with the appearance of two new moving breathers with opposite velocities, and a stationary breather trapped at the collision region; breather generation without trapping, with the appearance of new moving breathers with opposite velocities; breather trapping at the collision region, without the appearance of new moving breathers; and breather reflection. For each Klein-Gordon chain, the collision outcomes depend on the lattice parameters, the frequency of the perturbed stationary breathers, the internal structure of the moving breathers and the number of particles that initially separates the stationary breathers when they are perturbed.     

Linear stability of breathers of the discrete NLS

We consider real breather solutions of the discrete cubic nonlinear Schrödinger equation near the limit of vanishing coupling between the lattice sites and present leading order asymptotics for the eigenvalues of the linearization around the breathers. The expansion is given in fractional powers of the intersite coupling parameter and determines the linear stability of the breathers. The method we use relies on normal form ideas and applies to one and higher-dimensional lattices. We also present some examples.     

Breather Interaction Properties Induced by Self-Steepening and Space-Time Correction

We study the properties of breather interactions in nonlinear Kerr media with self-steepening and space-time correction and with either self-focusing or self-defocusing nonlinearity, and present a new family of exact breather solutions via the Darboux transformation with a special-designed quadratic spectral parameter. In contrast to the previous results of the nonlinear Schr?dinger equation(NLSE) hierarchy, we show that the relative phase of colliding breathers has a significant effect on the collision manifestation. In particular, only the out-of-phase interactions can generate small amplitude waves at the collision center, which are analogous to the NLSE superregular breathers. Our results will deepen our understanding of the properties of breather interactions and they will offer the possibility of experimental observations of super-regular breather dynamics in systems with self-steepening and space-time correction.     

Observation of rogue wave triplets in water waves

Doubly-localised breather solutions of the nonlinear Schrödinger equation (NLS) are considered to be appropriate models to describe rogue waves in water waves as well as in other nonlinear dispersive media such as fibre optics. Within the hierarchy of this type of formations, the Peregrine breather (PB) is the lowest-order rational solution. Higher-order solutions of this kind may be understood as a nonlinear superposition of fundamental Peregrine solutions. These superpositions are nontrivial and admit only a fixed well prescribed number of elementary breathers in each higher-order solution. Here, we report first observation of second-order solution which in reality is a triplet of rogue waves.     

Energy localization and transport in two-dimensional Fermi–Pasta–Ulam lattices

We investigate energy localization and transport in the form of discrete breathers and their movability in two-dimensional Fermi–Pasta–Ulam(FPU) lattices. We study the dynamics of the two-dimensional Fermi–Pasta–Ulam(FPU) lattice, incorporating the complicated effects of geometry, long-range interactions as well as nonlinear dispersion. We obtain several exact discrete breather(DB) solutions, such as the odd-parity and even-parity DBs, compact-like DBs and moving DBs for various geometries of the two-dimensional FPU chain. We show that DBs also exist in the same lattice in presence of next-nearest neighbour interaction. Large-amplitude exact subsonic travelling kink-soliton solutions are obtained in such a periodic chain in presence of long-range nonlinear dispersive interaction in the long-wavelength and weakly nonlinear limit. Such a two-dimensional FPU lattice admits finite amplitude nonlinear sinusoidal wave (NSW) solutions with short commensurate as well as incommensurate wavelengths for different geometries of the chain. The usefulness of these solutions for energy localization and transport in various physical systems are discussed.     

Elegant Ince—Gaussian breathers in strongly nonlocal nonlinear media

A novel class of optical breathers,called elegant Ince-Gaussian breathers,are presented in this paper.They are exact analytical solutions to Snyder and Mitchell’s mode in an elliptic coordinate system,and their transverse structures are described by Ince-polynomials with complex arguments and a Gaussian function.We provide convincing evidence for the correctness of the solutions and the existence of the breathers via comparing the analytical solutions with numerical simulation of the nonlocal nonlinear Schro¨dinger equation.     

Discrete breathers in the Peyrard-Bishop model of DNA

The Peyrard-Bishop model, which describes the dynamics of a DNA molecule, is considered. The solutions that represent discrete breathers are derived in the framework of the model. The dynamic stability of the stationary discrete breathers with respect to small perturbations is studied. The solutions can be interpreted as the experimentally observed opening of the base pairs in the DNA double strand at the initial stages of denaturation. It is also demonstrated that the model allows the existence of mobile breathers that move in the absence of perturbations in the environment. The interaction of the mobile breathers is numerically simulated. The Peierls-Nabarro barrier and the effective mass and velocity of the breather are estimated.     

Discrete breathers: exact solutions in piecewise linear models

Exact breather solutions are constructed in piecewise linear (PWL) versions of the discrete nonlinear Schrodinger and Klein-Gordon equations. These solutions correspond to intersections of stable and unstable manifolds of relevant fixed points in associated 2D mappings, an exact construction of which is possible due to the PWL nature of the models. Such exact solutions give us insight into several aspects of breather properties. The problem of dynamical stability of the breathers is mentioned as an instance, detailed results on which will be presented in a future paper.     

Discrete nonlinear Schrödinger breathers in a phonon bath

We study the dynamics of the discrete nonlinear Schr?dinger lattice initialized such that a very long transitory period of time in which standard Boltzmann statistics is insufficient is reached. Our study of the nonlinear system locked in this non-Gibbsian state focuses on the dynamics of discrete breathers (also called intrinsic localized modes). It is found that part of the energy spontaneously condenses into several discrete breathers. Although these discrete breathers are extremely long lived, their total number is found to decrease as the evolution progresses. Even though the total number of discrete breathers decreases we report the surprising observation that the energy content in the discrete breather population increases. We interpret these observations in the perspective of discrete breather creation and annihilation and find that the death of a discrete breather cause effective energy transfer to a spatially nearby discrete breather. It is found that the concepts of a multi-frequency discrete breather and of internal modes is crucial for this process. Finally, we find that the existence of a discrete breather tends to soften the lattice in its immediate neighborhood, resulting in high amplitude thermal fluctuation close to an existing discrete breather. This in turn nucleates discrete breather creation close to a already existing discrete breather. Received 21 January 1999 and Received in final form 20 September 1999     

Energy transfer in weakly coupled nonlinear oscillator chains: Transition from a wandering breather to nonlinear self-trapping

We present analytical and numerical studies of phase-coherent dynamics of intrinsically localized excitations (breathers) in a system of two weakly coupled nonlinear oscillator chains. We show that there are two qualitatively different dynamical regimes of the coupled breathers, either immovable or slowly moving: the periodic wandering of the low-amplitude breather between the chains, and the one-chain-localization of the high-amplitude breather. These two modes of coupled breathers can be mapped exactly onto two solutions of a pendulum equation, detached by a separatrix mode. We also show that these two regimes of the coupled breathers are similar, and are described by a similar pair of equations, to the two regimes in the nonlinear tunneling dynamics of two weakly coupled Bose-Einstein condensates. On the basis of this analogy, we predict a new tunneling mode of two weakly coupled Bose-Einstein condensates in which their relative phase oscillates around π/2 modulo π.     

Kink degeneracy and rogue potential solution for the (3+1)-dimensional B-type Kadomtsev–Petviashvili equation

In this paper, we obtained the exact breather-type kink soliton and breather-type periodic soliton solutions for the (3 + 1)-dimensional B-type Kadomtsev–Petviashvili (BKP) equation using the extended homoclinic test technique. Some new nonlinear phenomena, such as kink and periodic degeneracies, are investigated. Using the homoclinic breather limit method, some new rational breather solutions are found as well. Meanwhile, we also obtained the rational potential solution which is found to be just a rogue wave. These results enrich the variety of the dynamics of higher-dimensional nonlinear wave field.     

Bifurcations and chaotic threshold for a nonlinear system with an irrational restoring force

Nonlinear dynamical systems with an irrational restoring force often occur in both science and engineering, and always lead to a barrier for conventional nonlinear techniques. In this paper, we have investigated the global bifurcations and the chaos directly for a nonlinear system with irrational nonlinearity avoiding the conventional Taylor's expansion to retain the natural characteristics of the system. A series of transformations are proposed to convert the homoclinic orbits of the unperturbed system to the heteroclinic orbits in the new coordinate, which can be transformed back to the analytical expressions of the homoclinic orbits. Melnikov's method is employed to obtain the criteria for chaotic motion, which implies that the existence of homoclinic orbits to chaos arose from the breaking of homoclinic orbits under the perturbation of damping and external forcing. The efficiency of the criteria for chaotic motion obtained in this paper is verified via bifurcation diagrams, Lyapunov exponents, and numerical simulations. It is worthwhile noting that our study is an attempt to make a step toward the solution of the problem proposed by Cao Q J et al. (Cao Q J, Wiercigroch M, Pavlovskaia E E, Thompson J M T and Grebogi C 2008 Phil. Trans. R. Soc. A 366 635).