Driven localized excitations in the acoustic spectrum of small nonlinear macroscopic and microscopic lattices.

Both bright and dark traveling, locked, intrinsic localized modes (ILMs) have been generated with a spatially uniform driver at a frequency in the acoustic spectrum of a nonlinear micromechanical cantilever array. Complementary numerical simulations show that a minimum density of modes, hence array size, is required for the formation of such locked smoothly running excitations. Additional simulations on a small 1D antiferromagnetic spin system are used to illustrate that such uniformly driven running ILMs should be a generic feature of a nanoscale atomic lattice.