Thermalization in a nonlinear variant of the discrete nonlinear Schrödinger equation
Yagmur Kati, Aleksandra Maluckov, Ana Mancic, and Panayotis Kevrekidis
Phys. Rev. E 114, 034201 (2026) - Published 1 September, 2026
We study the thermalization properties of a fully nonlinear lattice model originally derived from the two-dimensional cubic defocusing nonlinear Schrödinger equation (NLS) using analytical and numerical methods. The model conserves both energy and norm, whose densities define a microcanonical energy-norm parameter space, while the nonlinear nearest-neighbor coupling is controlled by a parameter . Within this space, our analysis identifies broad parameter regimes in which the dynamics is ergodic not only within but also outside the standard Gibbs region, indicating the need for a modified statistical description. At higher energies, the system instead exhibits long-lived compacton-mediated localization and signatures of weak nonergodicity, as evidenced by finite-time variances, excursion-time statistics, and probability distributions of local amplitudes. We show that stronger coupling enhances fluctuations and accelerates the crossover of the finite-time variance of the local norm density from an initial decay toward the faster decay characteristic of ergodic thermalization, where denotes the averaging time. In the high-energy regime, weak coupling favors persistent single-site compacton localization, whereas stronger coupling yields long-lived two-site localization. Our results provide insights into the interplay between thermalization, localization, and non-Gibbs statistical behavior in genuinely nonlinear systems.
