Solitons and thermal fluctuations in strongly nonlinear solids

Abstract

We study a chain of anharmonic springs with tunable power law interactions as a minimal model to explore the propagation of strongly non-linear solitary wave excitations in a background of thermal fluctuations. By treating the solitary waves as quasi-particles, we derive an effective Langevin equation and obtain their damping rate and thermal diffusion. These analytical findings compare favorably against numerical results from a Langevin dynamic simulation. In our chains composed of two sided non-linear springs, we report the existence of an expansion solitary wave (anti-soliton) in addition to the compressive solitary waves observed for non-cohesive macroscopic particles.