SOLITON TRANSMISSION AND REFLECTION IN DISCONTINUOUS MEDIA

A new approach to nonlinear waves in one-dimensional discontinuous media is presented. As a model a nonlinear lattice which has a discontinuity of the mass distribution is considered. Two kinds of physically interesting waves, slowly varying waves and carrier wave modulations, are investigated. For the former (latter), incident, reflected and transmitted waves are described by Korteweg-de Veries (Nonlinear Schrodinger) equations on different coordinates. The reflected and transmitted waves are constructed from the incident wave analytically. Fission and reflection of a soliton due to the discontinuity are explicitly shown in the lowest order.