Existence and modulation of uniform sliding states in driven and overdamped particle chains (Q2428494)

The main problem considered here is the existence and modulation of uniform sliding states for a particle chain with damping \(\gamma\) and external driving force \(F\). The author considers a constant homogeneous force field acting on a particle chain in the presence of strong damping. Based on the introduction given in Section 1, he asks what the structure of the set of equilibrium states continued from ground states is as \(F\) increases from zero. Based on Lemma 3.1 and Theorems 5.2 and 5.3 he shows that for each mean spacing \(\omega > 0\), rational or irrational, there exists a critical value \(F_d(\omega)\geq0\), called the depinning force, such that the ground states for \(F=0\) can be continued to \(F\in \left(0,F_d(\omega)\right)\) if \(F_d(\omega)>0\) and the particle chain moves to the sliding regime for \(F>F_d(\omega)\). This paper consists of 7 sections. After the introduction, in Section 2, preliminaries are given, recalling the Aubry-Mather theory on ground states of the total energy of a particle chain \(H\) with \(F=0\); also existence and uniqueness results for equations of motion for the considered dissipative system, monotonicity and properties of mean spacing are discussed, and the main results obtained by Baesens and MacKay are summarized. Section 3 contains considerations when \(\omega\) is irrational, which results in a genuinely infinite dimensional system (these considerations are still an open problem). In the next section, the author presents a study on the existence of uniform sliding states with irrational mean spacing \(\omega\), based on the previous preparations. Section 5 gives necessary proofs for the proposed theorems. In Section 6 it is shown that the average velocity \(\overline{\nu}\) is continuous with respect to parameters \(\omega>0\), \(\gamma >0\), \(F\geq0\). The paper is crowned in Section 7.