Phase shift in the collision of two solitons propagating in a nonlinear transmission line

An electric transmission line periodically 100-section loaded with variable capacitance diodes, i.e., a nonlinear lumped LC network, has been constructed to study nonlinear wave (soliton) propagation in the dispersive medium. Experimental results on the head-on collision of solitons with other solitons have been demonstrated. Besides the observation that solitons preserve their line shape and velocity during the collision, it has been observed for the first time that the solitons show a phase shift after the collision. The observed phase shift agrees with the theoretical expectation, which has been derived from an analysis of the nonlinear equation for a one-dimensional Toda lattice equivalent to the transmission line.