Do nonlinear waves destroy Anderson localization? Computational and experimental studies yield subdiffusive nonequilibrium wave packet spreading. Chaotic dynamics and phase decoherence assumptions are used for explaining the data. We perform a quanti
tative analysis of the nonequilibrium chaos assumption, and compute the time dependence of main chaos indicators - Lyapunov exponents and deviation vector distributions. We find a slowing down of chaotic dynamics, which does not cross over into regular dynamics up to the largest observed time scales, still being fast enough to allow for a thermalization of the spreading wave packet. Strongly localized chaotic spots meander through the system as time evolves. Our findings confirm for the first time that nonequilibrium chaos and phase decoherence persist, fueling the prediction of a complete delocalization.
We probe the limits of nonlinear wave spreading in disordered chains which are known to localize linear waves. We particularly extend recent studies on the regimes of strong and weak chaos during subdiffusive spreading of wave packets [EPL {bf 91}, 3
0001 (2010)] and consider strong disorder, which favors Anderson localization. We probe the limit of infinite disorder strength and study Frohlich-Spencer-Wayne models. We find that the assumption of chaotic wave packet dynamics and its impact on spreading is in accord with all studied cases. Spreading appears to be asymptotic, without any observable slowing down. We also consider chains with spatially inhomogeneous nonlinearity which give further support to our findings and conclusions.
We present and compare different numerical schemes for the integration of the variational equations of autonomous Hamiltonian systems whose kinetic energy is quadratic in the generalized momenta and whose potential is a function of the generalized po
sitions. We apply these techniques to Hamiltonian systems of various degrees of freedom, and investigate their efficiency in accurately reproducing well-known properties of chaos indicators like the Lyapunov Characteristic Exponents (LCEs) and the Generalized Alignment Indices (GALIs). We find that the best numerical performance is exhibited by the textit{`tangent map (TM) method}, a scheme based on symplectic integration techniques which proves to be optimal in speed and accuracy. According to this method, a symplectic integrator is used to approximate the solution of the Hamiltons equations of motion by the repeated action of a symplectic map $S$, while the corresponding tangent map $TS$, is used for the integration of the variational equations. A simple and systematic technique to construct $TS$ is also presented.
We study the spreading of single-site excitations in one-dimensional disordered Klein-Gordon chains with tunable nonlinearity $|u_{l}|^{sigma} u_{l}$ for different values of $sigma$. We perform extensive numerical simulations where wave packets are e
volved a) without and, b) with dephasing in normal mode space. Subdiffusive spreading is observed with the second moment of wave packets growing as $t^{alpha}$. The dependence of the numerically computed exponent $alpha$ on $sigma$ is in very good agreement with our theoretical predictions both for the evolution of the wave packet with and without dephasing (for $sigma geq 2$ in the latter case). We discuss evidence of the existence of a regime of strong chaos, and observe destruction of Anderson localization in the packet tails for small values of $sigma$.
We consider the spatiotemporal evolution of a wave packet in disordered nonlinear Schrodinger and anharmonic oscillator chains. In the absence of nonlinearity all eigenstates are spatially localized with an upper bound on the localization length (And
erson localization). Nonlinear terms in the equations of motion destroy Anderson localization due to nonintegrability and deterministic chaos. At least a finite part of an initially localized wave packet will subdiffusively spread without limits. We analyze the details of this spreading process. We compare the evolution of single site, single mode and general finite size excitations, and study the statistics of detrapping times. We investigate the properties of mode-mode resonances, which are responsible for the incoherent delocalization process.
The recently introduced GALI method is used for rapidly detecting chaos, determining the dimensionality of regular motion and predicting slow diffusion in multi--dimensional Hamiltonian systems. We propose an efficient computation of the GALI$_k$ ind
ices, which represent volume elements of $k$ randomly chosen deviation vectors from a given orbit, based on the Singular Value Decomposition (SVD) algorithm. We obtain theoretically and verify numerically asymptotic estimates of GALIs long--time behavior in the case of regular orbits lying on low--dimensional tori. The GALI$_k$ indices are applied to rapidly detect chaotic oscillations, identify low--dimensional tori of Fermi--Pasta--Ulam (FPU) lattices at low energies and predict weak diffusion away from quasiperiodic motion, long before it is actually observed in the oscillations.
