Double-Period Breathers in a Driven-Damped Lattice

Spatially localized and temporally oscillating solutions, known as discrete breathers, have been experimentally and theoretically discovered in many physical systems. We considered a lattice of coupled damped and driven Helmholtz-Duffing oscillators in which we found a spatial coexistence of oscillating solutions with different frequencies. Specifically, we demonstrated that stable period-doubled solutions coexist with solutions oscillating at the frequency of the driving force. Such solution represents period-doubled breathers resulting from a stability overlap between subharmonic and harmonic solutions and exist up to a certain strength of the lattice coupling. Our findings suggest that this phenomenon can occur in any driven lattice where the nonlinearity admits bistability (or multi-stability) of subharmonic and harmonic solutions.