Defect-induced discrete breather in dissipative optical lattices with weak nonlinearity

It is widely believed that the discrete breather (DB) can only be created when the nonlinearity is strong in nonlinear systems. However, we here establish that this belief is incorrect. In this work, we systemically investigate the generation of DBs induced by coupling of the defects and nonlinearity for Bose-Einstein condensates in dissipative optical lattices. The results show that, only in a clean lattice is strong nonlinearity a necessary condition for generating of DB; whereas, if the lattice has a defect, the DBs can also be discovered even in weak nonlinearity, and its generation turns out to be controllable. In addition, we further reveal a critical interval of the defect in weak nonlinearity, within which DBs can be found, while outside DBs do not exist. Furthermore, we also explore the impact of multiple defects on the generation of DBs, and analyze the underlying physical mechanisms of these interesting phenomena. The results not only have the potential to be used for more precise engineering in the DB experiments, but also suggest that the DB may be ubiquitous since the defects and dissipation are unavoidable in real physics.