Landau-Zener tunneling of solitons.

Abstract

We consider Landau-Zener tunneling of solitons in a weakly coupled two-channel system, for this purpose we construct a simple mechanical system using two weakly coupled chains of nonlinear oscillators with gradually decreasing (first chain) and increasing (second chain) masses. The model allows us to consider soliton propagation and Landau-Zener tunneling between the chains. It is shown that soliton tunneling characteristics become drastically dependent on its amplitude in nonlinear regime. The validity of the developed tunneling theory is justified via comparison with direct numerical simulations on oscillator ladder system.