N coupled non-local harmonic oscillators leading to 2N-th order initial value problem

Abstract

We consider a set of interwoven harmonic oscillators where the acceleration of a given oscillator is determined by the position of its nearest neighbor. We show that this problem of N non-local oscillators with periodic boundary conditions leads to a 2N-th order initial value problem. We discuss the numerical solution of this using a non-polynomial spline method. A very precise numerical method that minimizes the error can be developed, which we test for a few examples of driving forces.