Non-reciprocal breathing solitons

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Veenstra, Jonas, Gamayun, Oleksandr, Brandenbourger, Martin, van Gorp, Freek, Terwisscha-Dekker, Hans, Caux, Jean-Sébastien, Coulais, Corentin
Format: Preprint
Published: 2024
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author Veenstra, Jonas
Gamayun, Oleksandr
Brandenbourger, Martin
van Gorp, Freek
Terwisscha-Dekker, Hans
Caux, Jean-Sébastien
Coulais, Corentin
author_facet Veenstra, Jonas
Gamayun, Oleksandr
Brandenbourger, Martin
van Gorp, Freek
Terwisscha-Dekker, Hans
Caux, Jean-Sébastien
Coulais, Corentin
contents Breathing solitons consist of a fast beating wave within a compact envelope of stable shape and velocity. They can propagate and carry information and energy in a variety of contexts such as plasmas, optical fibers and cold atoms, but propagating breathers have remained elusive when energy conservation is broken. Here, we report on the observation of breathing, unidirectional, arbitrarily long-lived solitons in non-reciprocal, non-conservative active metamaterials. Combining precision desktop experiments, numerical simulations and perturbation theory on generalizations of the sine-Gordon and nonlinear Schrödinger equations, we demonstrate that unidirectional breathers generically emerge in weakly nonlinear non-reciprocal materials, and that their dynamics are governed by an unstable fixed point. Crucially, breathing solitons can persist for arbitrarily long times provided: (i) this fixed point displays a bifurcation when a delicate balance between energy injection and dissipation is struck; (ii) the initial conditions allow the dynamics to reach this bifurcation point. Importantly, discrete effects tend to stabilize these non-reciprocal breathers over a wider range of initial conditions. Our work establishes non-reciprocity as a promising avenue to generate stable nonlinear unidirectional waves, and could be generalized beyond metamaterials to optics, soft matter and superconducting circuits.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2405_10562
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Non-reciprocal breathing solitons
Veenstra, Jonas
Gamayun, Oleksandr
Brandenbourger, Martin
van Gorp, Freek
Terwisscha-Dekker, Hans
Caux, Jean-Sébastien
Coulais, Corentin
Soft Condensed Matter
Materials Science
Pattern Formation and Solitons
Breathing solitons consist of a fast beating wave within a compact envelope of stable shape and velocity. They can propagate and carry information and energy in a variety of contexts such as plasmas, optical fibers and cold atoms, but propagating breathers have remained elusive when energy conservation is broken. Here, we report on the observation of breathing, unidirectional, arbitrarily long-lived solitons in non-reciprocal, non-conservative active metamaterials. Combining precision desktop experiments, numerical simulations and perturbation theory on generalizations of the sine-Gordon and nonlinear Schrödinger equations, we demonstrate that unidirectional breathers generically emerge in weakly nonlinear non-reciprocal materials, and that their dynamics are governed by an unstable fixed point. Crucially, breathing solitons can persist for arbitrarily long times provided: (i) this fixed point displays a bifurcation when a delicate balance between energy injection and dissipation is struck; (ii) the initial conditions allow the dynamics to reach this bifurcation point. Importantly, discrete effects tend to stabilize these non-reciprocal breathers over a wider range of initial conditions. Our work establishes non-reciprocity as a promising avenue to generate stable nonlinear unidirectional waves, and could be generalized beyond metamaterials to optics, soft matter and superconducting circuits.
title Non-reciprocal breathing solitons
topic Soft Condensed Matter
Materials Science
Pattern Formation and Solitons
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.10562