title: Damped-driven granular chains: an ideal playground for dark breathers and multibreathers.
abstract: By applying an out-of-phase actuation at the boundaries of a uniform chain of granular particles, we demonstrate experimentally that time-periodic and spatially localized structures with a nonzero background (so-called dark breathers) emerge for a wide range of parameter values and initial conditions. We demonstrate a remarkable control over the number of breathers within the multibreather pattern that can be "dialed in" by varying the frequency or amplitude of the actuation. The values of the frequency (or amplitude) where the transition between different multibreather states occurs are predicted accurately by the proposed theoretical model, which is numerically shown to support exact dark breather and multibreather solutions. Moreover, we visualize detailed temporal and spatial profiles of breathers and, especially, of multibreathers using a full-field probing technology and enable a systematic favorable comparison among theory, computation, and experiments. A detailed bifurcation analysis reveals that the dark and multibreather families are connected in a "snaking" pattern, providing a roadmap for the identification of such fundamental states and their bistability in the laboratory.
authors.affiliation: Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts 01003-4515, USA.
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Chong
authors.affiliation: Graduate Aerospace Laboratories (GALCIT), California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, USA.
authors.forename: F
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Aeronautics and Astronautics, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195-2400, USA.
authors.forename: J
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering and PACM, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, USA.
authors.forename: M O
authors.initials: MO
authors.lastname: Williams
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering and PACM, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, USA.
authors.forename: I G
authors.initials: IG
authors.lastname: Kevrekidis
authors.affiliation: Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, Massachusetts 01003-4515, USA.
authors.forename: P G
authors.initials: PG
authors.lastname: Kevrekidis
authors.affiliation: Graduate Aerospace Laboratories (GALCIT), California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, USA and Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering (D-MAVT), Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), 8092 Zurich, Switzerland.
authors.forename: C
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Daraio
mesh_terms: D003102:Colloids / Q000737:chemistry*; D003198:Computer Simulation; D004735:Energy Transfer; D017276:Friction; D008956:Models, Chemical; D014783:Viscosity
chemical_list: D003102:Colloids