Breathers and Thermal Relaxation in Fermi-Pasta-Ulam Arrays

Breather stability and longevity in thermally relaxing nonlinear arrays depend sensitively on their interactions with other excitations. We review the relaxation of breathers in Fermi-Pasta-Ulam arrays, with a specific focus on the different relaxation channels and their dependence on the interparticle interactions, dimensionality, initial condition, and system parameters.