Multiple symmetry breaking induced by weak damping in the Fermi-Pasta-Ulam-Tsingou recurrence process

Abstract: We show that even small dissipation can strongly affect the Fermi-Pasta-Ulam-Tsingou recurrence phenomenon. Taking the fully nonlinear stage of modulational instability as an experimentally accessible example, we show that the linear attenuation induces the symmetry of the recurrence to be broken through separatrix crossing occurring at multiple critical values of the attenuation. We provide experimental evidence for this phenomenon in a fiber optics experiment designed in such a way that the effective losses can be carefully tailored by techniques based on Raman amplification.