Multimode soliton dynamics in perturbed ladder lattices

We investigate the interplay between the longitudinal and lateral solitonic modes in perturbed ladder lattices in regard to the transmission of soliton wave packet. (1) In a longitudinal uniform field the lateral and longitudinal solitonic modes are shown to be independent. However, unlike in the unperturbed case the dynamics of the soliton center of mass becomes confined within a finite spatial domain via the Bloch-Zener mechanism in the longitudinal direction and due to the transverse finiteness of the ladder in the lateral one. (2) The segment of on-site impurities causes the soliton mode-mode mixing. As a result the soliton exhibits rather complex two- or three-dimensional dynamics accompanied by wave radiation which may give rise to soliton trapping. Nevertheless, under some specific conditions the soliton is able to bypass even the strong impurities slaloming between them. In particular, the slalom soliton dynamics is possible on a ladder lattice with a segment of zigzig-distributed on-site impurities. We formulate the conditions favorable to the case and show that their violation gives rise to either soliton trapping on or soliton reflection from the impure segment. (3) Finally, we study the effect of the modified transverse bond on the longitudinal soliton dynamics and reveal that it might act on the soliton as either an attractive or a repulsive potential, depending on the sign of the transverse energy of the ingoing soliton. The effect is essentially a solitonic one and becomes strictly pronounced for heavy solitons, when imperfection-induced radiation effects are exponentially suppressed. We expect that transverse-bond imperfection could serve as a filter selecting the solitons with prescribed properties. A similar function is feasible for zigzag-distributed on-site impurities too.