Thresholds for soliton creation in the Ablowitz-Ladik lattice (Q2655817)

The impact of square barrier initial conditions on the formation of solitary waves in discrete integrable lattices of the nonlinear Schrödinger type is considered. For the single-component Ablowitz-Ladik lattice it is obtained that a single-site excitation will not lead to a soliton formation, two-and three-site excitations will produce a soliton above a certain threshold barrier. Four-site square excitations or three-site non-square barrier excitations can even lead to two eigenvalues pairs with \(|z|>1\) and the concomitant formation of robust breathing states (breathing solitons). For the two-component system, i.e., the integrable discretization of the Manakov lattice, the authors showed that again one-site excitations cannot result in solitons. Two-site initial conditions represent the simplest initial condition that may lead to a soliton, while three-site initial conditions with partially overlapping support represent the simplest excitation that may result into robust breathing states (breathing solitons).