  Nonlinear localized excitations in one-dimensional diatomic lattices with
cubic and quartic nonlinearity are considered analytically by a
quasi-discreteness approach. The criteria for the occurence of asymmetric gap
solitons (with vibrating frequency lying in the gap of phonon bands) and
small-amplitude, asymmetric intrinsic localized modes (with the vibrating
frequency being above all the phonon bands) are obtained explicitly based on
the modulational instabilities of corresponding linear lattice plane waves. The
expressions of particle displacement for all these nonlinear localized
excitations are also given. The result is applied to standard two-body
potentials of the Toda, Born-Mayer-Coulomb, Lennard-Jones, and Morse type. The
comparison with previous numerical study of the anharmonic gap modes in
diatomic lattices for the standard two-body potentials is made and good
agreement is found.
