Dark Breathers in Granular Crystals
Christopher Chong (UMass, Amherst)
Joint session: Mechanics and Dynamics of Periodic Structures and Dynamic Behavior of Materials
Tue 4:20 - 5:40
Salomon 101
We present a study of the existence, stability and bifurcation structure of families of dark breathers in a one-dimensional chain of granular crystals. We will discuss some fascinating features of the Hamiltonian model describing granular crystals, such as the relevance of the NLS approximation and the failure of spectral stability predictions. We will also discuss the damped-driven counterpart of the model and report on preliminary experimental observations of dark breathers in the lab.