Renormalized waves and discrete breathers in β-fermi-pasta-ulam chains -: art. no. 264302

We demonstrate via numerical simulation that in the strongly nonlinear limit the beta-Fermi-Pasta-Ulam (beta-FPU) system in thermal equilibrium behaves surprisingly like weakly nonlinear waves in properly renormalized normal variables. This arises because the collective effect of strongly nonlinear interactions effectively renormalizes linear dispersion frequency and leads to effectively weak interaction among these renormalized waves. Furthermore, we show that the dynamical scenario for thermalized beta-FPU chains is spatially highly localized discrete breathers riding chaotically on spatially extended, renormalized waves.