This paper is devoted to a numerical study of the familiar α+β FPU model. Precisely, we here discuss, revisit and combine together two main ideas on the subject: (i) In the system, at small specific energy ε = E/N, two well separated time-scales are present: in the former one a kind of metastable state is produced, while in the second much larger one, such an intermediate state evolves and reaches statistical equilibrium. (ii) FPU should be interpreted as a perturbed Toda model, rather than (as is typical) as a linear model per- turbed by nonlinear terms. In the view we here present and support, the former time scale is the one in which FPU is essentially integrable, its dynamics being almost indistinguishable from the Toda dynamics: the Toda actions stay constant for FPU too (while the usual linear normal modes do not), the angles fill their almost invariant torus, and nothing else happens. The second time scale is instead the one in which the Toda actions significantly evolve, and statistical equilibrium is possible. We study both FPU-like initial states, in which only a few degrees of freedom are excited, and generic initial states extracted randomly from an (ap- proximated) microcanonical distribution. The study is based on a close comparison between the behavior of FPU and Toda in various situations. The main technical novelty is the study of the correlation functions of the Toda constants of motion in the FPU dynamics; such a study allows us to provide a good definition of the equilibrium time τ , i.e. of the second time scale, for generic initial data. Our investigation shows that τ is stable in the thermodynamic limit, i.e. the limit of large N at fixed ε, and that by reducing ε (ideally, the temperature), τ approximately grows following a power law τ ∼ ε^{-a} , with a = 5/2

We focus on two approaches that have been proposed in recent years for the explanation of the so-called Fermi-Pasta-Ulam (FPU) paradox, i.e., the persistence of energy localization in the "low-q " Fourier modes of Fermi-Pasta-Ulam nonlinear lattices, preventing equipartition among all modes at low energies. In the first approach, a low-frequency fraction of the spectrum is initially excited leading to the formation of "natural packets" exhibiting exponential stability, while in the second, emphasis is placed on the existence of "q breathers," i.e., periodic continuations of the linear modes of the lattice, which are exponentially localized in Fourier space. Following ideas of the latter, we introduce in this paper the concept of " q-tori" representing exponentially localized solutions on low-dimensional tori and use their stability properties to reconcile these two approaches and provide a more complete explanation of the FPU paradox.

We introduce and numerically study a long-range-interaction generalization of the one-dimensional Fermi-Pasta-Ulam (FPU) β− model. The standard quartic interaction is generalized through a coupling constant that decays as 1/r α (α ≥ 0)(with strength characterized by b > 0). In the α → ∞ limit we recover the original FPU model. Through classical molecular dynamics computations we show that (i) For α ≥ 1 the maximal Lyapunov exponent remains finite and positive for increasing number of oscillators N (thus yielding ergodicity), whereas, for 0 ≤ α < 1, it asymptotically decreases as N −κ(α) (consistent with violation of ergodicity); (ii) The distribution of time-averaged velocities is Maxwellian for α large enough, whereas it is well approached by a q-Gaussian, with the index q(α) monotonically decreasing from about 1.5 to 1 (Gaussian) when α increases from zero to close to one. For α small enough, the whole picture is consistent with a crossover at time t c from q-statistics to Boltzmann-Gibbs (BG) thermostatistics. More precisely, we construct a "phase diagram" for the system in which this crossover occurs through a frontier of the form 1/N ∝ b δ /t γ c with γ > 0 and δ > 0, in such a way that the q = 1 (q > 1) behavior dominates in the lim N →∞ lim t→∞ ordering (lim t→∞ lim N →∞ ordering).

A numerical and analytical study of the relaxation to equilibrium of both the FermiPasta-Ulam (FPU) α-model and the integrable Toda model, when the fundamental mode is initially excited, is reported. We show that the dynamics of both systems is almost identical on the short term, when the energies of the initially unexcited modes grow in geometric progression with time, through a secular avalanche process. At the end of this first stage of the dynamics the time-averaged modal energy spectrum of the Toda system stabilizes to its final profile, well described, at low energy, by the spectrum of a q-breather. The Toda equilibrium state is clearly shown to describe well the long-living quasi-state of the FPU system. On the long term, the modal energy spectrum of the FPU system slowly detaches from the Toda one by a diffusive-like rising of the tail modes, and eventually reaches the equilibrium flat shape. We find a simple law describing the growth of tail modes, which enables us to estimate the time-scale to equipartition of the FPU system, even when, at small energies, it becomes unobservable.