Enhanced distribution of a wave-packet in lattices with disorder and nonlinearity

Abstract

We show, numerically and experimentally, that the presence of weak disorder results in an enhanced energy distribution of an initially localized wave-packet, in one- and two-dimensional finite lattices. The addition of a focusing nonlinearity facilitates the spreading effect even further by increasing the wave-packet effective size. We find a clear transition between the regions of enhanced spreading (weak disorder) and localization (strong disorder).