Classical analog of quasilinear Landau-Zener tunneling

In this paper we develop an analytical framework to study the effect of nonlinearity on irreversible energy transfer in a system of two weakly coupled oscillators with time-dependent parameters, with special attention to an analogy between classical energy transfer and nonadiabatic quantum tunneling. For preciseness, we suppose that a linear oscillator with constant parameters is excited by an initial impulse but a coupled quasilinear oscillator with slowly varying parameters is initially at rest. It is shown that the equations of the slow passage through resonance in this system are identical to quasilinear equations of nonadiabatic Landau-Zener tunneling. Due to revealed equivalence, a recently found analogy between irreversible energy transfer in a classical linear system and conventional linear Landau-Zener tunneling can be extended to quasilinear systems. An explicit analytical solution of the quasilinear problem is found with the help of an iteration procedure, wherein the linear solution is chosen as an initial approximation. Correctness of the constructed approximations is confirmed by numerical simulations. The results presented in this paper, in addition to providing an analytical framework for understanding the transient dynamics of coupled oscillators, suggest an approximate procedure for solving the quasilinear Landau-Zener equations with arbitrary initial conditions over a finite time interval.