Energy spreading in strongly nonlinear disordered lattices

Abstract

We study the scaling properties of energy spreading in disordered strongly nonlinear Hamiltonian lattices. Such lattices consist of nonlinearly coupled local linear or nonlinear oscillators, and demonstrate a rather slow, subdiffusive spreading of initially localized wave packets. We use a fractional nonlinear diffusion equation as a heuristic model of this process, and confirm that the scaling predictions resulting from a self-similar solution of this equation are indeed applicable to all studied cases. We show that the spreading in nonlinearly coupled linear oscillators slows down compared to a pure power law, while for nonlinear local oscillators a power law is valid in the whole studied range of parameters. © IOP Publishing and Deutsche Physikalische Gesellschaft.