Parametrically driven nonlinear Dirac equation with arbitrary nonlinearity

Abstract

The damped and parametrically driven nonlinear Dirac equation with arbitrary nonlinearity parameter is analyzed, when the external force is periodic in space and given by , both numerically and in a variational approximation using five collective coordinates (time dependent shape parameters of the wave function). Our variational approximation satisfies exactly the low-order moment equations. Because of competition between the spatial period of the external force , and the soliton width ls, which is a function of the nonlinearity as well as the initial frequency of the solitary wave, there is a transition (at fixed ) from trapped to unbound behavior of the soliton, which depends on the parameters r and K of the external force and the nonlinearity parameter . We previously studied this phenomena when (Quintero et al 2019 J. Phys. A: Math. Theor. 52 285201) where we showed that for the soliton oscillates in an effective potential, while for it moves uniformly as a free particle. In this paper we focus on the dependence of the transition from oscillatory to particle behavior and explicitly compare the curves of the transition regime found in the collective coordinate approximation as a function of r and K when at fixed value of the frequency . Since the solitary wave gets narrower for fixed as a function of , we expect and indeed find that the regime where the solitary wave is trapped is extended as we increase .