Theoretical and experimental studies of diatomic lattice solitons using an electrical transmission line

The authors study theoretically and experimentally the properties of pulse solitons in a bi-inductance electrical transmission line which, in the small-amplitude limit, simulates a one-dimensional diatomic chain with cubic non-linear interactions. In the continuum limit they show that the characteristic equations of the system can be decoupled and reduced to a Korteweg-de Vries equation which admits pulse soliton solutions corresponding to acoustical solitons in the equivalent diatomic chain. The experimental study shows stable propagation and elastic interactions for low-amplitude pulses, while for higher-amplitude pulses the emission of small oscillations increases with the amplitude. The recurrence phenomena are examined quantitatively as a function of the frequency and amplitude of an initial sinusoidal wave. They are observed in the same amplitude range as the soliton excitations.