Particle scattering and fusion for the Ablowitz-Ladik chain

The Ablowitz-Ladik (AL) chain is an integrable discretized version of the nonlinear Schrödinger equation. We report on a novel underlying Hamiltonian particle system with properties similar to the ones known for the classical Toda chain and Calogero fluid with 1 / sinh 2 pair interaction. Boundary conditions are imposed such that, both in the distant past and future, particles have a constant velocity. We establish the many-particle scattering for the AL chain and obtain properties known for generic integrable many-body systems. For a specific choice of the chain, real initial data remain real in the course of time. Then, asymptotically, particles move in pairs with a velocity-dependent size and scattering shifts are governed by the fusion rule.