Abstract:
One-way or unidirectional coupling is a striking example of how topological considerations—the parity of an array of multistable elements combined with periodic boundary conditions—can qualitatively influence dynamics. Here we introduce a simple electronic model of one-way coupling in one and two dimensions and experimentally compare it to an improvedmechanicalmodel and an idealmathematicalmodel. In two dimensions, computation and experiment reveal richer one-way coupling phenomenology: In media where two-way coupling would dissipate all excitations, one-way coupling enables solitonlike waves to propagate in different directions with different speeds.