Ground waves in atomic chains with bi-monomial double-well potential (Q715676)

The author proves existence of periodic ground waves to Fermi-Pasta-Ulam lattices with double-well potentials generated by potentials that are a difference of monomials. The main result states the existence for any prescribed speed and any periodic domain size or the real line. Moreover, the solitary waves on the unbounded domain are suitably approximated by periodic ones. This generalizes previous results by A. Pankov and uses different methods. The proof is based on a variational formulation and also reveals that these waves are saddle points, supersonic, smooth, and non-constant for sufficiently large domains. Moreover, a numerical scheme with sample computations is given.