Experiments on the interactions between impurities and solitary waves in lattice model

The interactions between solitary waves and impurities have been studied experimentally in a 1D nonlinear coupled pendulum chain under vertical excitation. The mass and the coupling are unique, except a single pendulum with length impurity in the chain. The experiment reveals: the long impurity repels breather and attracts kink while the short one attracts breather and repels kink under higher frequency driving, and the long impurity attracts breather and repels kink while the short one repels breather and attracts kink under the lower frequency driving. These results prove the current theoretical prediction based on continuum-limit approximation.