Homogenization of fully overdamped Frenkel-Kontorova models (Q2378615)

The authors consider the simplest Frenkel-Kontorova model, which is a special and important case of a system of ODEs describing the motion of particles in interaction with their neighbours. They call the considered model ``overdamped'' since they neglet the acceleration term so the system considered is the following \[ \frac{d U_i}{dt} = U_{i+1} - 2 U_i + U_{i-1} + \sin (2 \pi U_i) + L \, , \hskip20pt t > 0 \, . \] They study the behaviour as the number of particles goes to infinity. One of the main result states that the limiting dynamics is described by a first order Hamilton-Jacobi equation. Some qualitative properties of the limit Hamiltonian are given.