COMPUTATIONAL STUDIES OF DISCRETE BREATHERS — FROM BASICS TO COMPETING LENGTH SCALES

Abstract

This work provides a description of the main computational tools for the study of discrete breathers. It starts with the observation of breathers through simple numerical runs, the study uses targeted initial conditions, and discrete breather impact on transient processes and thermal equilibrium. We briefly describe a set of numerical methods to obtain breathers up to machine precision. In the final part of this work we apply the discussed methods to study the competing length scales for breathers with purely anharmonic interactions — favoring superexponential localization — and long range interactions, which favor algebraic decay in space. As a result, we observe and explain the presence of three different spatial tail characteristics of the considered localized excitations.