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Tuesday, August 09, 2005
3:00 PM - 4:00 PM
CNLS Conference Room (TA-3, Bldg 1690)

Seminar

Being discrete and nonlinear: comparative study of different discretizations of the phi^4 model

Ishani Roy
Department of Mathematics & Statistics, University of Massachusetts

We present a systematic study of the scattering properties of a kink-antikink pair for five different disctetizations of the phi^4 model in terms of amount of radiation and the formation of `bounces' and `breathers'. I will first talk about different nonlinearities and different types of excitations in soliton-bearing nonlinear equations. The continuum phi^4 model is one of the prototypical and the simplest model in field theory and phase transitions. A discrete analog of this model can be created in several different ways depending on the desired properties, e.g. absence of a discreteness barrier to kink motion, existence of exact solutions, etc. We have studied kink/soliton scattering in different discrete models and observed/analyzed interesting nonlinear phenomena such as breather formation and collision.