Symmetry and resonance in periodic FPU chains

The symmetry and resonance properties of the Fermi Pasta Ulam chain with periodic boundary conditions are exploited to construct a near-identity transformation bringing this Hamiltonian system into a particularly simple form. This ‘Birkhoff-Gustavson normal form’ retains the symmetries of the original system and we show that in most cases this allows us to view the periodic FPU Hamiltonian as a perturbation of a nondegenerate Liouville integrable Hamiltonian. According to the KAM theorem this proves the existence of many invariant tori on which motion is quasiperiodic. Experiments confirm this qualitative behaviour. We note that one can not expect it in lower-order resonant Hamiltonian systems. So the FPU chain is an exception and its special features are caused by a combination of special resonances and symmetries.