Radiating Solitary Waves in an FPUT Lattice with Random Coefficients

Abstract

We study the propagation of solitary waves in a Fermi-Pasta-Ulam-Tsingou (FPUT) lattice with small random heterogeneity in the linear spring force. Perturbed by the random environment, solitary waves lose energy through a radiative tail, resulting in gradual amplitude attenuation. As long as the wave remains coherent, we track its position and amplitude via a modulation approach. An expansion of the resulting modulation equations provides explicit predictions for the slow average amplitude decay, which we verify through numerical simulations.