We study the escape of a chain of coupled units over the barrier of a metastable potential. It is demonstrated that a very weak external driving field with suitably chosen frequency suffices to accomplish speedy escape. The latter requires the passage through a transition state the formation of which is triggered by permanent feeding of energy from a phonon background into humps of localised energy and elastic interaction of the arising breather solutions. In fact, cooperativity between the units of the chain entailing coordinated energy transfer is shown to be crucial for enhancing the rate of escape in an extremely effective and low-energy cost way where the effect of entropic localisation and breather coalescence conspire.
We perform a numerical study of the initial-boundary value problem, with vanishing boundary conditions, of a driven nonlinear Schrodinger equation (NLS) with linear damping and a Gaussian driver. We identify Peregrine-like rogue waveforms, excited by two different types of vanishing initial data decaying at an algebraic or exponential rate. The observed extreme events emerge on top of a decaying support. Depending on the spatial/temporal scales of the driver, the transient dynamics -- prior to the eventual decay of the solutions -- may resemble the one in the semiclassical limit of the integrable NLS, or may, e.g., lead to large-amplitude breather-like patterns. The effects of the damping strength and driving amplitude, in suppressing or enhancing respectively the relevant features, as well as of the phase of the driver in the construction of a diverse array of spatiotemporal patterns, are numerically analyzed.
In the present work we explore a pre-stretched oscillator chain where the nodes interact via a pairwise Lennard-Jones potential. In addition to a homogeneous solution, we identify solutions with one or more (so-called) `breaks, i.e., jumps. As a function of the canonical parameter of the system, namely the precompression strain $d$, we find that the most fundamental one break solution changes stability when the monotonicity of the Hamiltonian changes with $d$. We provide a proof for this (motivated by numerical computations) observation. This critical point separates stable and unstable segments of the one break branch of solutions. We find similar branches for 2 through 5 break branches of solutions. Each of these higher `excited state solutions possesses an additional unstable pair of eigenvalues. We thus conjecture that $k$ break solutions will possess at least $k-1$ (and at most $k$) pairs of unstable eigenvalues. Our stability analysis is corroborated by direct numerical computations of the evolutionary dynamics.
We study the nonlinear dynamics of a completely inhomogeneous DNA chain which is governed by a perturbed sine-Gordon equation. A multiple scale perturbation analysis provides perturbed kink-antikink solitons to represent open state configuration with small fluctuation. The perturbation due to inhomogeneities changes the velocity of the soliton. However, the width of the soliton remains constant.
A nonlinear chain with six-order polynomial on-site potential is used to analyze the evolution of the total to kinetic energy ratio during development of modulational instability of extended nonlinear vibrational modes. For the on-site potential of hard-type (soft-type) anharmonicity, the instability of $q=pi$ mode ($q=0$ mode) results in the appearance of long-living discrete breathers (DBs) that gradually radiate their energy and eventually the system approaches thermal equilibrium with spatially uniform and temporally constant temperature. In the hard-type (soft-type) anharmonicity case, the total to kinetic energy ratio is minimal (maximal) in the regime of maximal energy localization by DBs. It is concluded that DBs affect specific heat of the nonlinear chain and for the case of hard-type (soft-type) anharmonicity they reduce (increase) the specific heat.
We study the dynamics of a classical nonlinear oscillator subject to noise and driven by a sinusoidal force. In particular, we give an analytical identification of the mechanisms responsible for the supernarrow peaks observed recently in the spectrum of a mechanical realization of the system. Our approach, based on the application of averaging techniques, simulates standard detection schemes used in practice. The spectral peaks, detected in a range of parameters corresponding to the existence of two attractors in the deterministic system, are traced to characteristics already present in the linearized stochastic equations. It is found that, for specific variations of the parameters, the characteristic frequencies near the attractors converge on the driving frequency, and, as a consequence, the widths of the peaks in the spectrum are significantly reduced. The implications of the study to the control of the observed coherent response of the system are discussed.