Discrete moving breather collisions in a Klein-Gordon chain of oscillators

We study the collisions of moving breathers with the same frequency, traveling with opposite directions within a Klein-Gordon chain of oscillators. Two types of collisions have been analyzed: symmetric and non-symmetric, head-on collisions. For low enough frequency the outcome is strongly dependent of the dynamical states of the two colliding breathers just before the collision. For symmetric collisions, several results can be observed: breather generation, with the formation of a trapped breather and two new moving breathers; breather reflection; generation of two new moving breathers; and breather fusion bringing about a trapped breather. For non-symmetric collisions some possible results are: breather generation, with the formation of three new moving breathers; breather fusion, originating a new moving breather; breather trapping with breather reflection; generation of two new moving breathers; and two new moving breathers traveling as a bound state. Breather annihilation has never been observed.     

Dynamical two electron states in a Hubbard-Davydov model

We study a model in which a Hubbard Hamiltonian is coupled to the dispersive phonons in a classical nonlinear lattice. Our calculations are restricted to the case where we have only two quasi-particles of opposite spins, and we investigate the dynamics when the second quasi-particle is added to a state corresponding to a minimal energy single quasi-particle state. Depending on the parameter values, we find a number of interesting regimes. In many of these, discrete breathers (DBs) play a prominent role with a localized lattice mode coupled to the quasiparticles. Simulations with a purely harmonic lattice show much weaker localization effects. Our results support the possibility that DBs are important in HTSC.Received: 14 August 2004, Published online: 26 November 2004PACS: 71.38.-k Polarons and electron-phonon interactions - 63.20.Pw Localized modes - 63.20.Ry Anharmonic lattice modes     

On symmetric breather collisions in lattices with saturable nonlinearity

Symmetric collisions of two discrete breathers in the lattice with saturable nonlinearity are investigated. The strong correlation of the collision properties and the parameters of colliding breathers (power, velocity, and phase difference), lattice parameters and position of the collision point is found. This is related to the internal structure of the colliding breathers and energy exchange with the phonon background. The type of collision changes from elastic to the inelastic (the breathers merging, multi-bounce interactions, breather creation etc.) with the increasing of the colliding breather power. Collision of high power breathers always results in the breather fusion. The elastic and inelastic collisions are related to the periodic and quasi-periodic colliding breathers, respectively.     

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     

Discrete soliton collisions in a waveguide array with saturable nonlinearity

We study the symmetric collisions of two mobile breathers/solitons in a model for coupled wave guides with a saturable nonlinearity. The saturability allows the existence of mobile breathers with high power. Three main regimes are observed: breather fusion, breather reflection and breather creation. The last regime seems to be exclusive of systems with a saturable nonlinearity, and has been previously observed in continuous models. In some cases a “symmetry breaking” can be observed, which we show to be an numerical artifact.     

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.     

Vector solitons in the dynamics of anharmonic monatomic lattices

It is shown that three types of solitary acoustic waves can develop in anharmonic crystal lattices corresponding to the three branches of acoustic phonons. A system of three nonlinear Schrödinger equations is derived to describe this situation. For greatly different group velocities, the interaction between solitons reduces collisions between them. When the group velocities of the different acoustic modes in a lattice are close to one another, bound states of the corresponding types of solitary waves occur. Bound states of this sort are vector solitons, whose polarization varies along the pulse. If the transverse acoustic modes are degenerate in velocity, the situation is extremely similar to the propagation of pulses in optical fibers.     

Discrete breathers

Nonlinear classical Hamiltonian lattices exhibit generic solutions in the form of discrete breathers. These solutions are time-periodic and (typically exponentially) localized in space. The lattices exhibit discrete translational symmetry. Discrete breathers are not confined to certain lattice dimensions. Necessary ingredients for their occurrence are the existence of upper bounds on the phonon spectrum (of small fluctuations around the groundstate) of the system as well as the nonlinearity in the differential equations. We will present existence proofs, formulate necessary existence conditions, and discuss structural stability of discrete breathers. The following results will be also discussed: the creation of breathers through tangent bifurcation of band edge plane waves; dynamical stability; details of the spatial decay; numerical methods of obtaining breathers; interaction of breathers with phonons and electrons; movability; influence of the lattice dimension on discrete breather properties; quantum lattices — quantum breathers.Finally we will formulate a new conceptual approach capable of predicting whether discrete breathers exist for a given system or not, without actually solving for the breather. We discuss potential applications in lattice dynamics of solids (especially molecular crystals), selective bond excitations in large molecules, dynamical properties of coupled arrays of Josephson junctions, and localization of electromagnetic waves in photonic crystals with nonlinear response.     

Quantum Breathers in Anisotropy Ferromagnetic Chains with Second-Order Coupling

Under considering the next-nearest-neighbor interaction, quantum breathers in one-dimensional anisotropy ferromagnetic chains are theortically studied. By introducing the Dyson-Maleev transformation for spin operators, a map to a Heisenberg ferromagnetic spin lattice into an extended Bose–Hubbard model can be established. In the case of a small number of bosons, by means of the numerical diagonalization technique, the energy spectrum of the corresponding extended Bose–Hubbard model containing two bosons is calculated. When the strength of the single-ion anisotropy is enough large, a isolated single band appears. This isolated single band corresponds to two-boson bound state, which is the simplest quantum breather state. It is shown that the introduction of the next-nearest-neighbor interaction will lead to interesting band structures. In the case of a large number of bosons, by applying the time-dependent Hartree approximation, quantum breather states for the system is constructed. In this case, the effect of the next-nearest-neighbor interaction on quantum breathers is also analyzed.     

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.     

Discrete breathers in classical ferromagnetic lattices with easy-plane anisotropy

Discrete breathers (nonlinear localized modes) have been shown to exist in various nonlinear Hamiltonian lattice systems. This paper is devoted to the investigation of a classical d-dimensional ferromagnetic lattice with easy plane anisotropy. Its dynamics is described via the Heisenberg model. Discrete breathers exist in such a model and represent excitations with locally tilted magnetization. They possess energy thresholds and have no analogs in the continuum limit. We are going to review the previous results on such solutions and also to report new results. Among the new results we show the existence of a big variety of these breather solutions, depending on the respective orientation of the tilted spins. Floquet stability analysis has been used to classify the stable solutions depending on their spatial structure, their frequency, and other system parameters, such as exchange interaction and local (single-ion) anisotropy.     

Gap and out-gap breathers in a binary modulated discrete nonlinear Schrödinger model

We consider a modulated discrete nonlinear Schrödinger (DNLS) model with alternating on-site potential, having a linear spectrum with two branches separated by a forbidden gap. Nonlinear localized time-periodic solutions with frequencies in the gap and near the gap -- discrete gap and out-gap breathers (DGBs and DOGBs) -- are investigated. Their linear stability is studied varying the system parameters from the continuous to the anti-continuous limit, and different types of oscillatory and real instabilities are revealed. It is shown, that generally DGBs in infinite modulated DNLS chains with hard (soft) nonlinearity do not possess any oscillatory instabilities for breather frequencies in the lower (upper) half of the gap. Regimes of exchange of stability between symmetric and antisymmetric DGBs are observed, where an increased breather mobility is expected. The transformation from DGBs to DOGBs when the breather frequency enters the linear spectrum is studied, and the general bifurcation picture for DOGBs with tails of different wave numbers is described. Close to the anti-continuous limit, the localized linear eigenmodes and their corresponding eigenfrequencies are calculated analytically for several gap/out-gap breather configurations, yielding explicit proof of their linear stability or instability close to this limit.Received: 31 October 2003, Published online: 17 February 2004PACS: 63.20.Pw Localized modes - 63.20.Ry Anharmonic lattice modes - 42.65.Wi Nonlinear waveguides     

Modulational instability,quantum breathers and two-breathers in a frustrated ferromagnetic spin lattice under an external magnetic field

The modulational instability, quantum breathers and two-breathers in a frustrated easy-axis ferromagnetic zig-zag chain under an external magnetic field are investigated within the Hartree approximation. By means of a linear stability analysis, we analytically study the discrete modulational instability and analyze the effect of the frustration strength on the discrete modulational instability region. Using the results from the discrete modulational instability analysis, the presence conditions of those stationary bright type localized solutions are presented. On the other hand, we obtain the analytical expressions for the stationary bright localized solutions and analyze the effect of the frustration on their emergence conditions. By taking advantage of these bright type single-magnon bound wave functions obtained, quantum breather states in the present frustrated ferromagnetic zig-zag lattice are constructed. What is more, the analytical forms for quantum two-breather states are also obtained. In particular, the energy level formulas of quantum breathers and two-breathers are derived.     

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.     

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.     

Akhmediev breather evolution in optical fiber for realistic initial conditions

We study numerically Akhmediev breather dynamics in optical fibers under initial conditions that do not correspond to an ideal infinitesimal modulation on a plane wave. We examine two modifications that are commonly encountered in realistic experiments: (i) a finite-amplitude (not necessarily weak) initial modulation; (ii) the use of pulsed excitation. In the first case, we derive an expression for the propagation distance required to generate a train of compressed breather pulses. In the second case, we show that breather dynamics with pulsed excitation can be interpreted in terms of local breather states at different points on the pulse envelope.     

Interaction of phonons with discrete breathers in one-dimensional chain with tunable type of anharmonicity

In this paper, we consider the interaction of small amplitude waves (phonons) with standing discrete breather (DB) in the one-dimensional chain of harmonically coupled particles interacting with the anharmonic one-site potential, which can be of hard-type or soft-type anharmonicity. The coefficients of phonon reflection and transmission are calculated numerically. It is found that for the case of hard-type anharmonicity (soft-type anharmonicity) DBs are more transparent for short-wavelength (long-wavelength) phonon waves, while they efficiently reflect long-wavelength (short-wavelength) phonons. In thermal equilibrium, when all phonons have equal energy density, it is found that for the same width of the transparency window, DB transmits less energy in the case of the hard-type anharmonicity. This is so because, in this case, DB reflects long-wavelength phonons, which have larger group velocity and hence greater contribution to the net energy flux through the DB. In this sense, DBs more efficiently suppress thermal conductivity in the chain with hard-type anharmonicity. Our results contribute to a better understanding of the role of discrete breathers in the heat flow in nonlinear chains.     

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.     

Stable particles in anisotropic spin-1 chains

Motivated by field-theoretic predictions we investigate the stable excitations that exist in two characteristic gapped phases of a spin-1 model with Ising-like and single-ion anisotropies. The sine-Gordon theory indicates a region close to the phase boundary where a stable breather exists besides the stable particles, that form the Haldane triplet at the Heisenberg isotropic point. The numerical data, obtained by means of the Density Matrix Renormalization Group, confirm this picture in the so-called large-D phase for which we give also a quantitative analysis of the bound states using standard perturbation theory. However, the situation turns out to be considerably more intricate in the Haldane phase where, to the best of our data, we do not observe stable breathers contrarily to what could be expected from the sine-Gordon model, but rather only the three modes predicted by a novel anisotropic extension of the Non-Linear Sigma Model studied here by means of a saddle-point approximation.