Soliton ratchetlike dynamics by ac forces with harmonic mixing

Mario Salerno, Yaroslav Zolotaryuk

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    Abstract

    The possibility of unidirectional motion of a kink (topological soliton) of a dissipative sine-Gordon equation in the presence of ac forces with harmonic mixing (at least biharmonic) and of zero mean, is presented. The dependence of the kink mean velocity on system parameters is investigated numerically and the results are compared with a perturbation analysis based on a point-particle representation of the soliton. We find that first order perturbative calculations lead to incomplete descriptions, due to the important role played by the soliton-phonon interaction in establishing the phenomenon. The role played by the temporal symmetry of the system in establishing soliton dc motions that resemble usual soliton ratchets, is also emphasized. In particular, we show the existence of an asymmetric internal mode on the kink profile that couples to the kink translational mode through the damping in the system. Effective soliton transport is achieved when the internal mode and the external force get phase locked. We find that for kinks driven by biharmonic drivers consisting of the superposition of a fundamental driver with its first odd harmonic, the transport arises only due to this internal mode mechanism, while for biharmonic drivers with even harmonic superposition, also a point-particle contribution to the drift velocity is present. The phenomenon is robust enough to survive the presence of thermal noise in the system and can lead to several interesting physical applications.
    Original languageEnglish
    JournalPhysical Review E. Statistical, Nonlinear, and Soft Matter Physics
    Volume65
    Issue number5
    Pages (from-to)056603
    ISSN1063-651X
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2002

    Bibliographical note

    Copyright (2002) American Physical Society

    Keywords

    • STOCHASTIC KINK DYNAMICS
    • DRIVEN
    • SYMMETRY
    • FLUXON
    • SUPPRESSION
    • DC CURRENT GENERATION
    • WEAK PERIODIC SIGNALS
    • LONG JOSEPHSON-JUNCTIONS
    • STABILIZATION
    • SINE-GORDON SYSTEM

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