An averaging theorem for FPU in the thermodynamic limit

Abstract

Consider an FPU chain composed of $N\gg 1$ particles, and endow the phase space with the Gibbs measure corresponding to a small temperature $\beta^{-1}$. Given a fixed $K<N$, we construct $K$ packets of normal modes whose energies are adiabatic invariants (i.e., are approximately constant for times of order $\beta^{1-a}$, $a>0$) for initial data in a set of large measure. Furthermore, the time autocorrelation function of the energy of each packet does not decay significantly for times of order $\beta$. The restrictions on the shape of the packets are very mild. All estimates are uniform in the number $N$ of particles and thus hold in the thermodynamic limit $N\to\infty$, $\beta>0$.