Chaos and thermalization in a classical chain of dipoles Iñarrea, Manuel González Férez, María Rosario Salas, J. Pablo Schmelcher, Peter M.I. and J.P.S. acknowledge financial support by the 560FQ Spanish Project No. MTM2017-88137-C2-2-P (MINECO). R.G.F. gratefully acknowledges financial support by the Spanish projects PID2020-113390GB-I00 (MICIN), PY20-00082 (Junta de Andalucía) and A-FQM-52-UGR20 (ERDF-University of Granada), and the Andalusian Research Group FQM-207. These work used the Beronia cluster (Universidad de La Rioja), which is supported by FEDERMINECO Grant No. UNLR-094E-2C-225. We explore the connection between chaos, thermalization, and ergodicity in a linear chain of N interacting dipoles. Starting from the ground state, and considering chains of different numbers of dipoles, we introduce single site excitations with excess energy ΔK. The time evolution of the chaoticity of the system and the energy localization along the chain is analyzed by computing, up to a very long time, the statistical average of the finite-time Lyapunov exponent λ(t) and the participation ratio Π(t). For small ΔK, the evolution of λ(t) and Π(t) indicates that the system becomes chaotic at approximately the same time as Π(t) reaches a steady state. For the largest considered values of ΔK the system becomes chaotic at an extremely early stage in comparison with the energy relaxation times. We find that this fact is due to the presence of chaotic breathers that keep the system far from equipartition and ergodicity. Finally, we show numerically and analytically that the asymptotic values attained by the participation ratio Π(t) fairly correspond to thermal equilibrium. 2022-09-28T09:51:57Z 2022-09-28T09:51:57Z 2022-07-27 info:eu-repo/semantics/article Manuel Iñarrea, Rosario González-Férez, J. Pablo Salas, and Peter Schmelcher. Chaos and thermalization in a classical chain of dipoles. Phys. Rev. E 106, 014213 [https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.106.014213] https://hdl.handle.net/10481/77044 10.1103/PhysRevE.106.014213 eng http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/ info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internacional American Physical Society