Dispersive evolution of pulses in oscillator chains with general interaction potentials (Q2496593)

The authors study the dispersive evolution of modulated pulses in a nonlinear oscillator chain embedded in a backgroundfield. The pulses are modeled as macroscopic modulations of the exact spatiotemporally periodic solutions of the linearized model. The macroscopic limit problem is obtained by choosing appropriate initial conditions in a specified class of functions in order to obtain an evolution equation within this function class. Using a multiscale analysis they find that the macroscopic evolution of the amplitude is given by the nonlinear Schrödinger equation. The main part of the paper is focused on the derivation and rigorous justification of partial differential equations as macroscopic limits describing the dynamics of a discrete lattice. The authors give rigorous quantitative estimates of the involved errors. The construction of the normal-form transformation on which the proof is based, is carried out in Fourier space.