Escape Dynamics in the Discrete Repulsive \phi^4-Model

TL;DR

This paper analyzes escape dynamics in a discrete Klein-Gordon model with a repulsive quartic potential, combining analytical and numerical methods to identify conditions for escape, collapse, and stability regimes.

Contribution

It provides new analytical conditions for escape and collapse in the discrete ^4-model, linking modulational stability to escape phenomena through combined analysis.

Findings

Identified conditions for single-site collapse and escape.

Mapped out regimes of modulational stability, instability, and escape.

Validated results with numerical simulations.

Abstract

We study deterministic escape dynamics in the framework of the discrete Klein-Gordon modelwith a repulsive quartic on-site potential. Using a combination of analytical techniques, based on differential and algebraic inequalities and selected numerical illustrations, we first derive conditions for collapse of an initially excited single-site unit, for both the Hamiltonian and the linearly damped versions of the system and showcase different potential fates of the single-site excitation, such as the possibility to be "pulled back" from outside the well or to "drive over" the barrier some of its neighbors. Next, we study the evolution of a uniform (small) segment of the chain and, in turn, consider the conditions that support its escape and collapse of the chain. Finally, our path from one to the few and finally to the many excited sites is completed by a modulational stability analysis and the exploration of its connection to the escape process for plane wave initial data. This reveals the existence of three distinct regimes, namely modulational stability, modulational instability without escape and, finally, modulational instability accompanied by escape. These are corroborated by direct numerical simulations. In each of the above cases, the variations of the relevant model parameters enable a consideration of the interplay of discreteness and nonlinearity within the observed phenomenology.