Kinematics of the forced and overdamped sine-Gordon soliton gas

Abstract

Motion of a driven and heavily damped sine-Gordon chain with a low density of kinks and tight coupling between particles is controlled by the nucleation and subsequent annihilation of pairs of kinks and antikinks. We show that in the steady state there are no spatial correlations between kinks or between kinks and antikinks. For a given number of kinks and antikinks all geometrical distributions are equally alike, as in equilibrium. A master equation for the probability distribution for the number of kinks on a finite chain is solved, and substantiates the physical reasoning in previous work. The probability distribution characterizing the spread along the direction of particle motion of a finite chain in equilibrium as well as in the driven overdamped case is derived by simple combinatorial considerations. The spatial spread of a driven chain in the thermodynamic limit does not approach a steady state; a given particle followed in time deviates as t1/2 from its average forced motion. This result follows from the hydrodynamic equations for the dilute kink gas. Comparison is made with other recent results. © 1981 Plenum Publishing Corporation.