Radiative annihilation of a soliton and an antisoliton in the coupled sine-Gordon equation

Abstract

In the sine-Gordon equation solitons and antisolitons in the absence of perturbations do not annihilate. Here I present numerical analysis of soliton-antisoliton collisions in the coupled sine-Gordon equation. It is shown that in such a system soliton-antisoliton pairs (breathers) do annihilate even in the absence of perturbations. The annihilation occurs via a logarithmic-in-time decay of a breather caused by emission of plasma waves in every period of breather oscillations. This also leads to a significant coupling between breathers and propagating waves, which may lead to self-oscillations at the geometrical resonance conditions in a dc-driven system. The phenomenon may be useful for achieving superradiant emission from coupled oscillators.