Travelling heteroclinic waves in a Frenkel-Kontorova chain with anharmonic on-site potential (Q1726942)

The authors consider the Frenkel-Kontorova chain on \(\mathbb Z\), whose equation in travelling wave coordinates is given by \[ c^2u''(x)-\gamma \Delta_Du(x)+g'(u(x))=0. \] Here \(c\) is the wave speed, \(\gamma\) is the elastic modulus of the elastics springs, \(g\) is smooth and periodic, and \(\Delta_D\) is the discrete Laplacian: \[ (\Delta_Du)(x):=u(x+1)-2u(x)+u(x-1). \] The authors give an existence result for a class of smooth nonconvex on-site potentials. Their method is based on the following steps: \begin{itemize} \item[-] development a global centre manifold theory for anharmonic wave trains; \item[-] parametrization of the centre manifold to obtain approximations for the solution sought. \item[-] describe the heteroclinic wave via a fixed point argument. \end{itemize}