Behavior and breakdown of higher-order Fermi-Pasta-Ulam-Tsingou recurrences

Abstract

We numerically investigate the existence and stability of higher-order recurrences (HoRs), including super-recurrences, super-super-recurrences, etc., in the α and β Fermi-Pasta-Ulam-Tsingou (FPUT) lattices for initial conditions in the fundamental normal mode. Our results represent a considerable extension of the pioneering work of Tuck and Menzel on super-recurrences. For fixed lattice sizes, we observe and study apparent singularities in the periods of these HoRs, speculated to be caused by nonlinear resonances. Interestingly, these singularities depend very sensitively on the initial energy and the respective nonlinear parameters. Furthermore, we compare the mechanisms by which the super-recurrences in the two models breakdown as the initial energy and respective nonlinear parameters are increased. The breakdown of super-recurrences in the β-FPUT lattice is associated with the destruction of the so-called metastable state and thus with relaxation towards equilibrium. For the α -FPUT lattice, we find this is not the case and show that the super-recurrences break down while the lattice is still metastable and far from equilibrium. We close with comments on the generality of our results for different lattice sizes.