On the approach to equilibrium of an Hamiltonian chain of anharmonic oscillators

Giorgio Parisi

Published 1997-04-25Version 1

In this note we study the approach to equilibrium of a chain of anharmonic oscillators. We find indications that a sufficiently large system always relaxes to the usual equilibrium distribution. There is no sign of an ergodicity threshold. The time however to arrive to equilibrium diverges when $g \to 0$, $g$ being the anharmonicity.