Phonons in Diatomic Linear Viscoelastic Chains

Solitary waves in diatomic chains.

We consider the mechanism of formation of isolated localized wave structures in the diatomic Fermi-Pasta-Ulam (FPU) model. Using a singular multiscale asymptotic analysis in the limit of high mass mismatch between the alternating elements, we obtain the typical slow-fast time scale separation and formulate the Fredholm orthogonality condition approximating a sequence of mass ratios supporting t...

Periodic Traveling Waves in Diatomic Granular Chains

Nonlinear waves in disordered diatomic granular chains.

We investigate the propagation and scattering of highly nonlinear waves in disordered granular chains composed of diatomic (two-mass) units of spheres that interact via Hertzian contact. Using ideas from statistical mechanics, we consider each diatomic unit to be a "spin," so that a granular chain can be viewed as a spin chain composed of units that are each oriented in one of two possible ways...

Chains of Viscoelastic Spheres

Given a chain of viscoelastic spheres with fixed masses of the first and last particles. We raise the question: How to chose the masses of the other particles of the chain to assure maximal energy transfer? The results are compared with a chain of particles for which a constant coefficient of restitution is assumed. Our simple example shows that the assumption of viscoelastic particle propertie...

Symmetry Classification of Diatomic Molecular Chains

A symmetry classification of possible interactions in a diatomic molecular chain is provided. For nonlinear interactions the group of Lie point transformations, leaving the lattice invariant and taking solutions into solutions, is at most five-dimensional. An example is considered in which subgroups of the symmetry group are used to reduce the dynamical differential-difference equations to pure...