Management of localized energy in discrete nonlinear transmission lines

TL;DR

This paper experimentally investigates how static impurities in nonlinear electric transmission lines can control the creation, destruction, and manipulation of localized energy modes, revealing new methods for managing energy localization.

Contribution

It demonstrates a novel experimental approach to control intrinsic localized modes in nonlinear transmission lines using static impurities and propagating electrical pulses.

Findings

Impurities can seed or destroy localized modes.

Electrical pulses can generate stationary localized modes.

Pulse polarity controls excitation and elimination of localized modes.

Abstract

The manipulation of locked intrinsic localized modes/discrete breathers is studied experimentally in nonlinear electric transmission line arrays. Introducing a static lattice impurity in the form of a capacitor, resistor or inductor has been used both to seed or destroy and attract or repel these localized excitations. In a nonlinear di-element array counter propagating short electrical pulses traveling in the acoustic branch are used to generate a stationary intrinsic localized mode in the optic branch at any particular lattice site. By changing the pulse polarity the same localized excitation can be eliminated demonstrating that the dynamical impurity associated with the propagating electrical pulse in the acoustic branch can trigger optical localized mode behavior.