arXiv · 1011.1219
Renormalized waves and thermalization of the Klein-Gordon equation: What sound does a nonlinear string make?
Abstract
We study the thermalization of the classical Klein-Gordon equation under a u^4 interaction. We numerically show that even in the presence of strong nonlinearities, the local thermodynamic equilibrium state exhibits a weakly nonlinear behavior in a renormalized wave basis. The renormalized basis is defined locally in time by a linear transformation and the requirement of vanishing wave-wave correlations. We show that the renormalized waves oscillate around one frequency, and that the frequency dispersion relation undergoes a nonlinear shift proportional to the mean square field. In addition, the renormalized waves exhibit a Planck like spectrum. Namely, there is equipartition of energy in the low frequency modes described by a Boltzmann distribution, followed by a linear exponential decay in the high frequency modes.
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David Shirokoff. 2011-06-30. Renormalized waves and thermalization of the Klein-Gordon equation: What sound does a nonlinear string make?. https://doi.org/10.1103/physreve.83.046217
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