Soliton-breather reaction pathways

We use a collective coordinate approach to investigate corpuscular properti es of breathers in nonlinear lattice systems. We calculate the breather int ernal energy and inertial mass and use them to analyze the reaction pathway s of breathers with kinks that are preformed in the lattice. We find that t here is an effective kink-breather intraction potential that, under some ci rcumstances, is attractive and has a double well shape. Furthermore, we fin d that in some cases the internal energy of a moving breather can be relase d during the reaction with the kink and subsequently transformed to kink tr anslational energy. These breather properties seem to be model independent. [S1063-651X(99)05411-2].