Properties of IR-active lattice vibrations in the vicinity of kinks in the Frenkel-Kontorova model

Abstract

The properties of infrared lattice vibrations in the presence of kinks in the Frenkel-Kontorova model are analyzed. Our results show that the vibration of particles involved in kink formation is very similar to that in a gap mode around a force-constant defect. We found that the IR phonon mode intensity possesses a universal dependence on a certain combination of system parameters and kink concentration. On the basis of these results a criterion is proposed for separating the regime of weakly interacting kinks in the system from the regime of a kink lattice.