Driven sine-Gordon breathers as kink-antikink bound states of nonrelativistic constant wave number

Abstract

We give a noncovariant Hamiltonian collective-coordinate description of the sine-Gordon breather driven by constant forces. Thresholds for breather decomposition are calculated, including their dependence on the initial phase. Quantitative agreement is obtained with the numerical results presented in a paper by Lomdahl, Olsen, and Samuelsen [Phys. Rev. A 29, 350 (1984)].