The Fermi-Pasta-Ulam problem and its underlying integrable dynamics

by Giancarlo Benettin (Universita` di Padova)

Monday 11 May 2020, 14:00 → 16:00 Europe/Rome

Aula Conversi (Dip. di Fisica - Edificio G. Marconi)

IL SEMINARIO E' STATO RIMANDATO A DATA DA DESTINARSI.

In 1954 Fermi, Pasta and Ulam for the first time used a computer to study the ergodic behavior of a system with many degrees of freedom, aiming to investigate the foundations of Statistical Mechanics. Several branches of physical and mathematical investigations started from that paper. The aim of the talk is to shortly review some main contributions to the problem and then revisit, in the light of some recent numerical results, one of the leading ideas, namely that the model should be understood as a perturbation of the Toda model, well known in Statistical Mechanics, which is nonlinear but integrable. The behavior at the  hermodynamic limit turns out to be particularly delicate.