Transmission of waves through a pinned elastic medium

TL;DR

This paper studies how elastic waves scatter through a disordered medium modeled by a sine-Gordon system, revealing universal correlations affecting wave transmission across localization regimes, with applications to Josephson junction arrays.

Contribution

It introduces a theoretical framework for wave transmission in a disordered elastic medium with non-Gaussian correlations, applicable to natural and synthetic systems like Josephson junction arrays.

Findings

Universal signatures of correlations in wave transmission.

Wave behavior across weak and strong localization regimes.

Application to Josephson junction array dynamics.

Abstract

We investigate the scattering of elastic waves off a disordered region described by a one-dimensional random-phase sine-Gordon model. The collective pinning results in an effective static disorder potential with universal and non-Gaussian correlations, acting on propagating waves. We find signatures of the correlations in the wave transmission in a wide frequency range, which covers both the weak and strong localization regimes. Our theory elucidates the dynamics of collectively-pinned phases occurring in any natural or synthetic elastic medium. The latter one is exemplified by a one-dimensional array of Josephson junctions, for which we specify our results. The obtained results provide benchmarks for the array-enabled quantum simulations addressing the dynamics in broader and yet-unexplored domains of individual pinning and quantum Bose glass.