Swinging Waves in the Ablowitz-Ladik Equation

Abstract

We construct a novel family of exact cnoidal wave and soliton solutions of the focusing and defocusing Ablowitz-Ladik equations. Unlike cnoidal waves that were obtained by earlier authors, the phase variable of the new solutions exhibits a nonlinear dependence on time and site number; the wave ``swings". Our approach hinges on the existence of a two-point map governing the absolute value of the complex field; this map gives rise to standing waves centred arbitrarily relative to the lattice sites. Having derived stationary solutions, we use these as a basis for constructing waves with nonzero velocity. The localised members of the new family comprise dark solitons with the nontrivial asymptotic behaviour. We identify periodic and quasiperiodic patterns and establish an explicit quantisation rule for the velocity of the wave circulating in a closed loop of $N$ sites.