Discrete breathers in a two-dimensional hexagonal Fermi-Pasta-Ulam lattice

We consider a two-dimensional Fermi-Pasta-Ulam (FPU) lattice with hexagonal symmetry. Using asymptotic methods based on small amplitude ansatz, at third order we obtain a reduction to a cubic nonlinear Schrodinger equation (NLS) for the breather envelope. However, this does not support stable soliton solutions, so we pursue a higher order analysis yielding a generalized NLS, which includes known stabilizing terms. We present numerical results which suggest that long-lived stationary and moving breathers are supported by the lattice. We find breather solutions which move in an arbitrary direction, an ellipticity criterion for the wavenumbers of the carrier wave, asymptotic estimates for the breather energy, and a minimum threshold energy below which breathers cannot be found. This energy threshold is maximized for stationary breathers and becomes vanishingly small near the boundary of the elliptic domain where breathers attain a maximum speed. Several of the results obtained are similar to those obtained for the square FPU lattice (Butt and Wattis 2006 J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 39 4955), though we find that the square and hexagonal lattices exhibit different properties in regard to the generation of harmonics, and the isotropy of the generalized NLS equation.