Dark solitonic excitations and collisions from a fourth-order dispersive nonlinear Schrödinger model for the alpha helical protein

Abstract

Recent protein observations motivate the dark-soliton study to explain the energy transfer in the proteins. In this paper we will investigate a fourth-order dispersive nonlinear Schrödinger equation, which governs the Davydov solitons in the alpha helical protein with higher-order effects. Painlevé analysis is performed to prove the equation is integrable. Through the introduction of an auxiliary function, bilinear forms and dark N-soliton solutions are constructed with the Hirota method and symbolic computation. Asymptotic analysis on the two-soliton solutions indicates that the soliton collisions are elastic. Decrease of the coefficient of higher-order effects can increase the soliton velocities. Graphical analysis on the two-soliton solutions indicates that the head-on collision between the two solitons, overtaking collision between the two solitons and collision between a moving soliton and a stationary one are all elastic. Collisions among the three solitons are all pairwise elastic.