Goedde, C. G.; Lichtenberg, A. J.; Lieberman, M. A. Chaos and the approach to equilibrium in a discrete sine-Gordon equation. (English) Zbl 0761.58014 Physica D 59, No. 1-3, 200-225 (1992). Summary: We study the long time dynamics of a Hamiltonian system with many degrees of freedom. We numerically investigate the system’s approach to equipartition of energy when the initial energy is confined to one or a small set of Fourier modes. We find that there is a transition from a low energy regime in which energy does not spread appreciably among the modes to a high energy regime in which the system rapidly approaches equipartition, and that this transition coincides with the onset of chaos in the system, as evidenced by a sharp rise in the largest Lyapunov exponent. For low frequency initial conditions, the critical parameter for this transition is the scaled energy \(E'=(L/N)^ 2E\). Using a generalization of the traditional Chirikov resonance overlap calculation on a three-mode subset of the full system, we predict the onset of widespread chaos and the transition to equipartition on relatively short time scales. Cited in 7 Documents MSC: 37D45 Strange attractors, chaotic dynamics of systems with hyperbolic behavior 39A12 Discrete version of topics in analysis 70H05 Hamilton’s equations Keywords:sine-Gordon equation; energy equipartition; chaotic dynamics; Hamiltonian system with many degrees of freedom PDFBibTeX XMLCite \textit{C. G. Goedde} et al., Physica D 59, No. 1--3, 200--225 (1992; Zbl 0761.58014) Full Text: DOI References: [1] Lichtenberg, A. J.; Lieberman, M. A., Regular and Stochastic Motion (1983), Springer: Springer Berlin · Zbl 0506.70016 [2] Fermi, E.; Pasta, J. R.; Ulam, S., Studies of nonlinear problems, (Collected Works of Enrico Fermi (1965), University of Chicago Press: University of Chicago Press Chicago) · Zbl 0353.70028 [3] Bivins, R. L.; Metropolis, N.; Pasta, J. R., J. Comput. Phys., 12, 65 (1973) [4] Ford, J.; Waters, J., J. Math. Phys., 4, 1293 (1963) [5] Izrailev, F. M.; Chirikov, B. V., Sov. Phys. Dokl., 11, 30 (1966) [6] Zabusky, N. J.; Kruskal, M. D., Phys. Rev. Lett., 15, 240 (1965) [7] Rocky Mountain J. Math., 8, 211 (1978) [8] Arnold, V. I., Russ. Math. Surveys, 18, 85 (1964) [9] Nekhoroshev, N. N., Russ. Math. Surveys, 32, 6 (1977) [10] SIAM J. Appl. Math., 50, 339 (1990) [11] Livi, R.; Pettini, M.; Ruffo, S.; Sparpaglione, M.; Vulpiani, A., Phys. Rev. A, 31, 1039 (1985) [12] Pettini, M.; Landolfi, M., Phys. Rev. A, 41, 768 (1990) [13] Bishop, A. R.; Krumhansl, J. A.; Trullinger, S. E., Physica D, 1, 1 (1980) [14] Flesch, R.; Forest, M. G.; Sinha, A., Physica D, 48, 169 (1991) [15] Ablowitz, M. J.; Kaup, D. J.; Newell, A. C.; Segur, H., Phys. Lett., 30, 1262 (1973) [16] Forest, M. G.; Goedde, C. G.; Sinha, A., Phys. Rev. Lett., 68, 2722 (1992) [17] Goedde, C. G.; Lichtenberg, A. J.; Lieberman, M. A., Physica D, 41, 341 (1990) [18] Yoshica, Y., Phys. Lett. A, 150, 262 (1990) [19] Atkins, K. M.; Logan, D. E., Phys. Lett. A, 162, 255 (1992) This reference list is based on information provided by the publisher or from digital mathematics libraries. Its items are heuristically matched to zbMATH identifiers and may contain data conversion errors. In some cases that data have been complemented/enhanced by data from zbMATH Open. This attempts to reflect the references listed in the original paper as accurately as possible without claiming completeness or a perfect matching.