Dynamics of periodic fractional discrete NLS in the continuum limit

Abstract

The fractional discrete nonlinear Schr\"odinger equation (fDNLS) is studied on a periodic lattice from the analytic and dynamic perspective by varying the mesh size $h>0$ and the nonlocal L\'evy index $\alpha \in (0,2]$. We show that the discrete system converges to the fractional NLS as $h \rightarrow 0$ below the energy space by directly estimating the difference between the discrete and continuum solutions in $L^2(\mathbb{T})$ using the discrete periodic Strichartz estimates. The sharp convergence rate via the finite difference method (FDM) is shown to be $O(h^{\frac{\alpha}{2+\alpha}})$ in the energy space. To further illustrate the convergent behavior of fDNLS, we survey various dynamical behaviors of the continuous wave (CW) solutions in the context of modulational instability, emphasizing the interplay between linear dispersion (or lattice diffraction), characterized by the nonlocal lattice coupling, and nonlinearity. In particular, the transition as $h \rightarrow 0$ from the linear dependence of maximum gain $\Omega_m$ on the amplitude $A$ of CW solutions to the quadratic dependence is shown analytically and numerically.