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S. Flach

Publications and source records attributed to S. Flach.

At least 91 records · Page 5Linked to original sources

Tunneling of quantum rotobreathers

We analyze the quantum properties of a system consisting of two nonlinearly coupled pendula. This non-integrable system exhibits two different symmetries: a permutational symmetry (permutation of the pendula) and another one related to the reversal of the total momentum of the system. Each of these symmetries is responsible for the existence of two kinds of quasi-degenerated states. At sufficiently high energy, pairs of symmetry-related states glue together to form quadruplets. We show that, starting from the anti-continuous limit, particular quadruplets allow us to construct quantum states whose properties are very similar to those of classical rotobreathers. By diagonalizing numerically the quantum Hamiltonian, we investigate their properties and show that such states are able to store the main part of the total energy on one of the pendula. Contrary to the classical situation, the coupling between pendula necessarily introduces a periodic exchange of energy between them with a frequency which is proportional to the energy splitting between quasi-degenerated states related to the permutation symmetry. This splitting may remain very small as the coupling strength increases and is a decreasing function of the pair energy. The energy may be therefore stored in one pendulum during a time period very long as compared to the inverse of the internal rotobreather frequency.

cond-mat↗

Incommensurate dynamics of resonant breathers in Josephson junction ladders

We present theoretical and experimental studies of resonant localized resistive states in a Josephson junction ladder. These complex breather states are obtained by tuning the breather frequency into the upper band of linear electromagnetic oscillations of the ladder. Their prominent feature is the appearance of resonant steps in the current-voltage (I-V) characteristics. We have found the resonant breather-like states displaying incommensurate dynamics. Numerical simulations show that these incommensurate resonant breathers persist for very low values of damping. Qualitatively similar incommensurate breather states are observed in experiments performed with Nb-based Josephson ladders. We explain the appearance of these states with the help of resonance-induced hysteresis features in the I-V dependence.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

AC-driven quantum spins: resonant enhancement of transverse DC magnetization

We consider s=1/2 spins in the presence of a constant magnetic field in z-direction and an AC magnetic field in the x-z plane. A nonzero DC magnetization component in y direction is a result of broken symmetries. A pairwise interaction between two spins is shown to resonantly increase the induced magnetization by one order of magnitude. We discuss the mechanism of this enhancement, which is due to additional avoided crossings in the level structure of the system.

quant-ph↗

Broken symmetries and directed collective energy transport

We study the appearance of directed energy current in homogeneous spatially extended systems coupled to a heat bath in the presence of an external ac field E(t). The systems are described by nonlinear field equations. By making use of a symmetry analysis we predict the right choice of E(t) and obtain directed energy transport for systems with a nonzero topological charge Q. We demonstrate that the symmetry properties of motion of topological solitons (kinks and antikinks) are equivalent to the ones for the energy current. Numerical simulations confirm the predictions of the symmetry analysis and, moreover, show that the directed energy current drastically increases as the dissipation parameter $α$ reduces. Our results generalize recent rigorous theories of currents generated by broken time-space symmetries to the case of interacting many-particle systems.

nlin.PS↗

Magnetic field induced control of breather dynamics in a single plaquette of Josephson junctions

We present a theoretical study of inhomogeneous dynamic (resistive) states in a single plaquette consisting of three Josephson junctions. Resonant interactions of such a breather state with electromagnetic oscillations manifest themselves by resonant current steps and voltage jumps in the current-voltage characteristics. An externally applied magnetic field leads to a variation of the relative shift between the Josephson current oscillations of two resistive junctions. By making use of the rotation wave approximation analysis and direct numerical simulations we show that this effect allows to effectively control the breather instabilities, e. g. to increase (decrease) the height of the resonant steps and to suppress the voltage jumps in the current-voltage characteristics.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

Breathers in a single plaquette of Josephson junctions: existence, stability and resonances

We present a theoretical study of inhomogeneous dynamic (resistive) states in a single plaquette consisting of three Josephson junctions. These breather states are found to exist in a large range of control parameters (dc bias, anisotropy and self inductance). We perform an analytical analysis of these states, and their stability and resonance behaviour. Numerical calculations confirm our results and show that instabilities arise due to resonant interactions between the breather and electromagnetic oscillations mediated by the breather state. These instabilities manifest themselves by various nonlinearities, resonant steps and voltage jumps in the current-voltage characteristics.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

Dynamical mechanisms of DC current generation in driven Hamiltonian systems

Recent symmetry considerations (Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 84} 2358 (2000)) have shown that dc currents may be generated in the stochastic layer of a system describing the motion of a particle in a one-dimensional potential in the presence of an ac time-periodic drive. In this paper we explain the dynamical origin of this current. We show that the dc current is induced by the presence and desymmetrization of ballistic channels inside the stochastic layer. The existence of these channels is due to resonance islands with non-zero winding numbers. The characterization of the flights dynamics inside ballistic channels is described by distribution functions. We obtain these distribution functions numerically and find very good agreement with simulation data.

nlin.CD↗

Breathers in Josephson junction ladders: resonances and electromagnetic waves spectroscopy

We present a theoretical study of the resonant interaction between dynamical localized states (discrete breathers) and linear electromagnetic excitations (EEs) in Josephson junction ladders. By making use of direct numerical simulations we find that such an interaction manifests itself by resonant steps and various sharp switchings (voltage jumps) in the current-voltage characteristics. Moreover, the power of ac oscillations away from the breather center (the breather tail) displays singularities as the externally applied dc bias decreases. All these features can be mapped to the spectrum of EEs that has been derived analytically and numerically. Using an improved analysis of the breather tail, a spectroscopy of the EEs is developed. The nature of breather instability driven by localized EEs is established.

cond-mat.supr-con↗

Rectification of current in ac-driven nonlinear systems and symmetry properties of the Boltzmann equation

We study rectification of a current of particles moving in a spatially periodic potential under the influence of time-periodic forces with zero mean value. If certain time-space symmetries are broken a non-zero directed current of particles is possible. We investigate this phenomenon in the framework of the kinetic Boltzmann equation. We find that the attractor of the Boltzmann equation completely reflects the symmetries of the original one-particle equation of motion. Especially, we analyse the limits of weak and strong relaxation. The dc current increases by several orders of magnitude with decreasing dissipation.

nlin.CD↗

Tunneling of localized excitations: giant enhancement due to fluctuations

We consider the tunneling of localized excitations (many boson bound states) in the presence of a bosonic bath. We show both analytically and numerically that the bath influence results in a dramatical enhancement of the amplitude of the excitation tunneling. The order of the bosonic flow in the course of the tunneling process is obtained. On the background of the giant tunneling enhancement we observe and describe additional resonant enhancement and {\sl suppression} of tunneling due to avoided level crossings.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

Discrete breathers in classical spin lattices

Discrete breathers (nonlinear localised modes) have been shown to exist in various nonlinear Hamiltonian lattice systems. In the present paper we study the dynamics of classical spins interacting via Heisenberg exchange on spatial $d$-dimensional lattices (with and without the presence of single-ion anisotropy). We show that discrete breathers exist for cases when the continuum theory does not allow for their presence (easy-axis ferromagnets with anisotropic exchange and easy-plane ferromagnets). We prove the existence of localised excitations using the implicit function theorem and obtain necessary conditions for their existence. The most interesting case is the easy-plane one which yields excitations with locally tilted magnetisation. There is no continuum analogue for such a solution and there exists an energy threshold for it, which we have estimated analytically. We support our analytical results with numerical high-precision computations, including also a stability analysis for the excitations.

cond-mat↗

Static magnetization induced by time-periodic fields with zero mean

We consider a single spin in a constant magnetic field or an anisotropy field. We show that additional external time-periodic fields with zero mean may generate nonzero time-averaged spin components which are vanishing for the time-averaged Hamiltonian. The reason is a lowering of the dynamical symmetry of the system. A harmonic signal with proper orientation is enough to display the effect. We analyze the problem both with and without dissipation, both for quantum spins (s=1/2,1) and classical spins. The results are of importance for controlling the system's state using high or low frequency fields and for using new resonance techniques which probe internal system parameters, to name a few.

cond-mat.stat-mech↗

Directed current due to broken time-space symmetry

We consider the classical dynamics of a particle in a one-dimensional space-periodic potential U(X) = U(X+2π) under the influence of a time-periodic space-homogeneous external field E(t)=E(t+T). If E(t) is neither symmetric function of t nor antisymmetric under time shifts $E(t \pm T/2) \neq -E(t)$, an ensemble of trajectories with zero current at t=0 yields a nonzero finite current as $t\to \infty$. We explain this effect using symmetry considerations and perturbation theory. Finally we add dissipation (friction) and demonstrate that the resulting set of attractors keeps the broken symmetry property in the basins of attraction and leads to directed currents as well.

chao-dyn↗

Observation of breathers in Josephson ladders

We report on the observation of spatially-localized excitations in a ladder of small Josephson junctions. The excitations are whirling states which persist under a spatially-homogeneous force due to the bias current. These states of the ladder are visualized using a low temperature scanning laser microscopy. We also compute breather solutions with high accuracy in corresponding model equations. The stability analysis of these solutions is used to interpret the measured patterns in the I-V characteristics.

cond-mat↗

Moving lattice kinks and pulses: an inverse method

We develop a general mapping from given kink or pulse shaped travelling-wave solutions including their velocity to the equations of motion on one-dimensional lattices which support these solutions. We apply this mapping - by definition an inverse method - to acoustic solitons in chains with nonlinear intersite interactions, to nonlinear Klein-Gordon chains, to reaction-diffusion equations and to discrete nonlinear Schrödinger systems. Potential functions can be found in at least a unique way provided the pulse shape is reflection symmetric and pulse and kink shapes are at least $C^2$ functions. For kinks we discuss the relation of our results to the problem of a Peierls-Nabarro potential and continuous symmetries. We then generalize our method to higher dimensional lattices for reaction-diffusion systems. We find that increasing also the number of components easily allows for moving solutions.

patt-sol↗

Incremental expansions for the ground state energy of the two-dimensional Hubbard model

A generalization of Faddeev's approach of the 3-body problem to the many-body problem leads to the method of increments. This method was recently applied to account for the ground state properties of Hubbard-Peierls chains (JETP Letters 67 (1998) 1052). Here we generalize this approach to two-dimensional square lattices and explicitely treat the incremental expansion up to third order. Comparing our numerical results with various other approaches (Monte Carlo, cumulant approaches) we show that incremental expansions are very efficient because good accuracy with those approaches is achieved treating lattice segments composed of 8 sites only.

cond-mat.str-el↗

Breathers on lattices with long range interaction

We analyze the properties of breathers (time periodic spatially localized solutions) on chains in the presence of algebraically decaying interactions $1/r^s$. We find that the spatial decay of a breather shows a crossover from exponential (short distances) to algebraic (large distances) decay. We calculate the crossover distance as a function of $s$ and the energy of the breather. Next we show that the results on energy thresholds obtained for short range interactions remain valid for $s>3$ and that for $s < 3$ (anomalous dispersion at the band edge) nonzero thresholds occur for cases where the short range interaction system would yield zero threshold values.

cond-mat↗