2013/06/07 by Rosalie Laure Woulaché, Andrea Vanossi, Nicola Manini
Engineering · Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Adhesion, Friction, and Surface Interactions #Chain (unit) #Classical mechanics #Force Microscopy Techniques and Applications #Mathematics #Mechanical and Optical Resonators #Mechanics #Nonlinear system #Physics #Quantization (signal processing) #Quantum mechanics #acm:00A79 #cond-mat.other #msc:00A79
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreve.88.012810
published as Phys. Rev. E 88, 012810 (2013) · 7 pages, 6 figures
arxiv created 2013/06/07 · openalex publication_date 2013/07/15 · arxiv updated 2013/11/15 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We investigate the frictional sliding of an incommensurate chain of interacting particles confined in between two nonlinear on-site substrate potential profiles in relative motion. We focus here on the class of Remoissenet-Peyrard parametrized potentials V(RP)(x,s), whose shape can be varied continuously as a function of s, recovering the sine-Gordon potential as a particular case. The observed frictional dynamics of the system, crucially dependent on the mutual ratios of the three periodicities in the sandwich geometry, turns out to be significantly influenced also by the shape of the substrate potential. Specifically, variations of the shape parameter s affect significantly and not trivially the existence and robustness of the recently reported velocity quantization phenomena [A. Vanossi et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 056101 (2006)], where the chain center-of-mass velocity to the externally imposed relative velocity of the sliders stays pinned to exact "plateau" values for wide ranges of the dynamical parameters.