Chaotic wave packet spreading in two-dimensional disordered nonlinear lattices

Abstract: We reveal the generic characteristics of wave packet delocalization in two-dimensional nonlinear disordered lattices by performing extensive numerical simulations in two basic disordered models: the Klein-Gordon system and the discrete nonlinear Schr\"{o}dinger equation. We find that in both models (a) the wave packet's second moment asymptotically evolves as $t^{a_m}$ with $a_m \approx 1/5$ ($1/3$) for the weak (strong) chaos dynamical regime, in agreement with previous theoretical predictions [S.~Flach, Chem.~Phys.~{\bf 375}, 548 (2010)], (b) chaos persists, but its strength decreases in time $t$ since the finite time maximum Lyapunov exponent $\Lambda$ decays as $\Lambda \propto t^{\alpha_{\Lambda}}$, with $\alpha_{\Lambda} \approx -0.37$ ($-0.46$) for the weak (strong) chaos case, and (c) the deviation vector distributions show the wandering of localized chaotic seeds in the lattice's excited part, which induces the wave packet's thermalization. We also propose a dimension-independent scaling between the wave packet's spreading and chaoticity, which allows the prediction of the obtained $\alpha_{\Lambda}$ values.