Non-Maxwellian behavior and quasistationary regimes near the modal solutions of the Fermi-Pasta-Ulam β system

In a recent paper [M. Leo, R. A. Leo, and P. Tempesta, J. Stat. Mech. (2011) P03003], it has been shown that the π/2-mode exact nonlinear solution of the Fermi-Pasta-Ulam β system, with periodic boundary conditions, admits two energy density thresholds. For values of the energy density ε below or above these thresholds, the solution is stable. Between them, the behavior of the solution is unstable, first recurrent and then chaotic. In this paper, we study the chaotic behavior between the two thresholds from a statistical point of view, by analyzing the distribution function of a dynamical variable that is zero when the solution is stable and fluctuates around zero when it is unstable. For mesoscopic systems clear numerical evidence emerges that near the second threshold, in a large range of the energy density, the numerical distribution is fitted accurately with a q-Gaussian distribution for very large integration times, suggesting the existence of a quasistationary state possessing a weakly chaotic behavior. A normal distribution is recovered in the thermodynamic limit.