Ergodicity, mixing, and recurrence in the three rotor problem

In the classical three rotor problem, three equal point masses move on a circle subject to attractive cosine potentials of strength g. In the center of mass frame, energy E is the only known conserved quantity. In earlier works [Krishnaswami and Senapati, Indian Acad. Sci. Conf. Ser. 2(1), 139 (2019), and Chaos 29(12), 123121 (2019)], an order-chaos-order transition was discovered in this system along with a band of global chaos for 5.33g≤E≤5.6g. Here, we provide numerical evidence for ergodicity and mixing in this band. The distributions of relative angles and angular momenta along generic trajectories are shown to approach the corresponding distributions over constant energy hypersurfaces (weighted by the Liouville measure) as a power-law in time. Moreover, trajectories emanating from a small volume are shown to become uniformly distributed over constant energy hypersurfaces, indicating that the dynamics is mixing. Outside this band, ergodicity and mixing fail, though the distributions of angular momenta over constant energy hypersurfaces show interesting phase transitions from Wignerian to bimodal with increasing energy. Finally, in the band of global chaos, the distribution of recurrence times to finite size cells is found to follow an exponential law with the mean recurrence time satisfying a scaling law involving an exponent consistent with global chaos and ergodicity.