Solitons and thermal fluctuations in strongly nonlinear solids
Solitons and thermal fluctuations in strongly nonlinear solids
We study a chain of anharmonic springs with tunable power law interactions as a minimal model to explore the propagation of strongly nonlinear solitary wave excitations in a background of thermal fluctuations. By treating the solitary waves as quasiparticles, we derive an effective Langevin equation and obtain their damping rate …