English

Anomalous transport in the Fermi-Pasta-Ulam-Tsingou model: a review and open problems

Statistical Mechanics 2026-02-18 v1 Chaotic Dynamics

Abstract

This review provides an up-to-date account of energy transport in Fermi-Pasta-Ulam-Tsingou (FPUT) chains, a key testbed for nonequilibrium statistical physics. We discuss the transition from the historical puzzle of thermalization to the discovery of anomalous heat transport, where the effective thermal conductivity κ\kappa diverges with system size LL as κLδ\kappa \propto L^\delta. The article clarifies the distinction between two universality classes: the FPUT-αβ\alpha \beta model, characterized by δ=1/3\delta = 1/3 and linked to Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) physics, and the symmetric FPUT-β\beta model, where numerical and theoretical evidence support δ=2/5\delta = 2/5. We investigate how finite-size effects - unavoidably induced by the thermostatting protocols - can disguise the asymptotic scaling. Additionally, we analyze the role of conservative noise in preserving hydrodynamic properties and examine how proximity to integrable limits leads to long-lived quasi-particles and, thereby, to diffusive regimes over intermediate spatial scales.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2602.15512,
  title  = {Anomalous transport in the Fermi-Pasta-Ulam-Tsingou model: a review and open problems},
  author = {Stefano Lepri and Roberto Livi and Antonio Politi},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2602.15512},
  year   = {2026}
}

Comments

Contribution for the Special Issue on FPUT, in Journal of Statistical Physics