arXiv:0903.2191 · Physical Review E
Dynamical thermalization of disordered nonlinear lattices
Mario Mulansky, Karsten Ahnert, ARKADY S. PIKOVSKY, Dima L. Shepelyansky
Abstract
We study numerically how the energy spreads over a finite disordered nonlinear one-dimensional lattice, where all linear modes are exponentially localized by disorder. We establish emergence of dynamical thermalization characterized as an ergodic chaotic dynamical state with a Gibbs distribution over the modes. Our results show that the fraction of thermalizing modes is finite and grows with the nonlinearity strength.