EFFECT OF DISCRETENESS ON A SINE-GORDON 3-SOLITON SOLUTION

The collision between a kink and a high amplitude breather in the Fren kel-Kontorova chain with a small degree of discreteness was studied nu merically and the results were compared with an exact three-soliton so lution to the sine-Gordon (SG) equation. It was found that there exist s a narrow range of parameters of quasiparticles where the collision i n the discrete system is strongly inelastic and that the inelastic col lision occurs in the vicinity of a separatrix of the SG three-soliton solution. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B,V.