Friction of a driven chain: Role of momentum conservation, Goldstone and radiation modes

Abstract: We analytically study friction and dissipation of a driven bead in a 1D harmonic chain, and analyze the role of internal damping mechanism as well as chain length. Specifically, we investigate Dissipative Particle Dynamics and Langevin Dynamics, as paradigmatic examples that do and do not display translational symmetry, with distinct results: For identical parameters, the friction forces can differ by many orders of magnitude. For slow driving, a Goldstone mode traverses the entire system, resulting in friction of the driven bead that grows arbitrarily large (Langevin) or gets arbitrarily small (Dissipative Particle Dynamics) with system size. For a long chain, the friction for DPD is shown to be bound, while it shows a singularity (i.e. can be arbitrarily large) for Langevin damping. For long underdamped chains, a radiation mode is recovered in either case, with friction independent of damping mechanism. For medium length chains, the chain shows the expected resonant behavior. At the resonance, friction is non-analytic in damping parameter $\gamma$, depending on it as $\gamma^{-1}$. Generally, no zero frequency bulk friction coefficient can be determined, as the limits of small frequency and infinite chain length do not commute, and we discuss the regimes where "simple" macroscopic friction occurs.