Spatiotemporal chaotic dynamics of solitons with internal structure in the presence of finite-width inhomogeneities (Q1587142)

Stability and spatiotemporal dynamics of kink-solitons in the Klein-Gordon model are analyzed numerically and analytically. Models of this type serve for different applications (Josephson junction, polymers, hydrogen-bonds etc.), hence the influence of inhomogeneities is of particular interest. The authors go beyond point-like inhomogeneities and consider finite-width humps together with an external field that changes sign. By topological equivalence of their model choice to the sine-Gordon equations, they can find exact soliton solutions in this medium, and compute the discrete spectrum. An instability of the translation mode corresponds to an effective double-well potential, i.e. a pitchfork bifurcation. Numerical studies of the influence of several such inhomogeneites yield a rich variety of spationtemporal patterns. Finally, the authors consider the interaction of a soliton with radiative modes, i.e. continuous spectrum.