On the role of 5-wave resonances in the nonlinear dynamics of the Fermi-Pasta-Ulam-Tsingou lattice (2502.21293v1)

Abstract: We study the dynamics of the $(\alpha+\beta)$ Fermi-Pasta-Ulam-Tsingou lattice (FPUT lattice, for short) for an arbitrary number $N$ of interacting particles, in regimes of small enough nonlinearity so that a Birkhoff-Gustavson type of normal form can be found using tools from wave-turbulence theory. Specifically, we obtain the so-called Zakharov equation for $4$-wave resonant interactions and its extension to $5$-wave resonant interactions by Krasitskii, but we introduce an important new feature: even the generic terms in these normal forms contain $resonant$ $interactions$ $only$, via a $unique$ canonical transformation. The resulting normal forms provide an approximation to the original FPUT lattice that possesses a significant number of exact quadratic conservation laws, beyond the quadratic part of the Hamiltonian. We call the new equations "exact-resonance evolution equations" and examine their properties: (i) Heisenberg representation's slow evolution allows us to implement numerical methods with large time steps to obtain relevant dynamical information, such as Lyapunov exponents. (ii) We introduce tests, such as convergence of the normal form transformation and truncation error verification, to successfully validate our exact-resonance evolution equations. (iii) The systematic construction of new quadratic invariants (via the resonant cluster matrix) allows us to use finite-time Lyapunov exponent calculations to quantify the level of nonlinearity at which the original FPUT lattice is well approximated by the exact-resonance evolution equations. We show numerical experiments in the case $N=9$, but the theory and numerical methods are valid for arbitrary values of $N$. We conclude that, when $3$ divides $N$, at small enough nonlinearity the FPUT lattice's dynamics and nontrivial hyperchaos are governed by $5$-wave resonant interactions.