Transparent lattices and their solitary waves

Abstract

We provide a familiy of transparent tight-binding models with non-trivial potentials and site-dependent hopping parameters. Their feasibility is discussed in electromagnetic resonators, dielectric slabs and quantum-mechanical traps. In the second part of the paper, the arrays are obtained through a generalization of supersymmetric quantum mechanics in discrete variables. The formalism includes a finite-difference Darboux transformation applied to the scattering matrix of a periodic array. A procedure for constructing a hierarchy of discrete hamiltonians is indicated and a particular biparametric family is given. The corresponding potentials and hopping functions are identified as solitary waves, pointing to a discrete spinorial generalization of the Korteweg-deVries family.