Damped and Driven Breathers and Metastability

Abstract

In this article we prove the existence of a new family of periodic solutions for discrete, nonlinear Schrödinger equations subject to spatially localized driving and damping and we show numerically that they provide a more accurate approximation to metastable states in these systems than previous proposals. We also study the stability properties of these solutions and show that they fit well with a previously proposed mechanism for the emergence and persistence of metastable behavior.