Multistable Dissipative Breathers and Novel Collective States in SQUID Lieb Metamaterials

A SQUID (Superconducting QUantum Interference Device) metamaterial on a Lieb lattice with nearest-neighbor coupling supports simultaneously stable dissipative breather families which are generated through a delicate balance of input power and intrinsic losses. Breather multistability is possible due to the peculiar snaking flux ampitude - frequency curve of single dissipative-driven SQUIDs, which for relatively high sinusoidal flux field amplitudes exhibits several stable and unstable solutions in a narrow frequency band around resonance. These breathers are very weakly interacting with each other, while multistability regimes with different number of simultaneously stable breathers persist for substantial intervals of frequency, flux field amplitude, and coupling coefficients. Moreover, the emergence of chimera states as well as novel temporally chaotic states exhibiting spatial homogeneity within each sublattice of the Lieb lattice is demonstrated.