Electrical Transmission Lines as Models for Soliton Propagation in Materials: Elementary Aspects of Video Solitons

Distributed electrical and mechanical transmission lines are useful models for nonlinear wave motion with dispersion in many interesting physical systems. Nonlinear wave motion with dispersion produces solitons in optical fibers. A soliton will propagate along an appropriate transmission line with constant velocity and without change in shape. The shape remains the same because the nonlinearity of the medium creates higher harmonics and a steeper pulse, whereas dispersion tends to broaden the pulse. A balance between the two is reached, and a stable pulse results. Thus, a communication system using solitons might be advantageous. Electrical distributed lines have an obvious direct application to integrated circuit parametric amplifiers, harmonic generators, and shock-wave generators for pulse shaping. They also have applications to secret, or secure, coding systems using two soliton interactions, and to data transmission using solitons.