Localized Mode and Nonergodicity of a Harmonic Oscillator Chain

Abstract

We present a simple and microscopic physical model that breaks the ergodicity. Our model consists of coupled classical harmonic oscillators, and the motion of the tagged particle obeys the generalized Langevin equation satisfying the second fluctuation dissipation theorem. It is found that although the nonergodicity strength, which is expected to detect the ergodicity breaking, for this model vanishes, the velocity auto correlation function of the tagged particle asymptotically oscillates. We analyze the model by using the molecular dynamics and the exact diagonalization as well as the rigorous mapping to the generalized Langevin equation. Our analysis reveals that the asymptotic oscillation is caused by a localized mode with an isolated frequency from the continuous phonon spectrum.