Chaotic destruction of Anderson localization in a nonlinear lattice

Department of Physics and Astronomy, Potsdam University - 14476 Potsdam-Golm, Germany, EU

Corresponding author: pikovsky@uni-potsdam.de

Received: 16 June 2008
Accepted: 21 August 2008

Abstract

We consider a scattering problem for a nonlinear disordered lattice layer governed by the discrete nonlinear Schrödinger equation. The linear state with exponentially small transparency, due to the Anderson localization, is followed for an increasing nonlinearity, until it is destroyed via a bifurcation. The critical nonlinearity is shown to decay with the lattice length as a power law. We demonstrate that in the chaotic regimes beyond the bifurcation the field is delocalized and this leads to a drastic increase of transparency.