Observation of chiral solitary waves in a nonlinear Aharonov-Bohm ring

TL;DR

This paper reports the experimental observation of chiral solitary waves in a nonlinear mechanical ring with tunable gauge fields, revealing new out-of-equilibrium phenomena and transitions influenced by magnetic flux.

Contribution

It introduces the first experimental observation of chiral solitary waves in a nonlinear Aharonov-Bohm ring with tunable gauge fields and nonlinearities.

Findings

Observation of a tunable self-trapping transition.

Emergence of interaction-stabilized chiral solitary waves.

Potential for exploring nonlinear phenomena in larger arrays.

Abstract

Nonlinearities can have a profound influence on the dynamics and equilibrium properties of discrete lattice systems. The simple case of two coupled modes with self-nonlinearities gives rise to the rich bosonic Josephson effects. In many-site arrays, nonlinearities yield a wealth of rich phenomena, including a variety of solitonic excitations, the emergence of vortex lattices in the presence of gauge fields, and the general support of chaotic dynamics. Here, we experimentally explore a three-site mechanical ring with tunable gauge fields and nonlinearities. We observe a macroscopic self-trapping transition that is tunable by the magnetic flux, consistent with the equilibrium response. We further observe novel behavior that appears only out of equilibrium, the emergence of interaction-stabilized chiral solitary waves. These results provide a starting point to explore nonlinear phenomena arising in larger mechanical arrays coupled to static and dynamical gauge fields.