Dark breathers in Klein-Gordon lattices. Band analysis of their stability properties

Discrete bright breathers are well known phenomena. They are localized excitations that consist of a few excited oscillators in a lattice and the rest of them having very small amplitude or none. In this paper we are interested in the opposite kind of localization, or discrete dark breathers, where most of the oscillators are excited and one or a few units of them have very small amplitude. We investigate, using band analysis, Klein-Gordon lattices at frequencies not close to the linear ones. Dark breathers at low coupling are shown to be stable for Klein-Gordon chains with soft on-site potentials and repulsive dispersive interaction, and with hard on-site potentials and attractive dispersive interactions. At higher coupling dark breathers lose their stability via subharmonic, harmonic or oscillatory bifurcations, depending on the model. However, most of these bifurcations are harmless in the sense that they preserve dark localization. None of these bifurcations disappear when the system is infinite. Dark breathers in dissipative systems are found to be stable for both kinds of dispersive interaction. (author)