Ciencia-Física

A team of researchers, led by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute professor Yuri Lvov, has found an elegant explanation for the long-standing Fermi-Pasta-Ulam (FPU) problem, first proposed in 1953, investigated with one of the world's first digital computers, and now considered the foundation of experimental mathematics.

The research, published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, offers a mathematical explanation for how a level of energy sufficient to produce one complete wave in an idealized chain of masses connected by springs is gradually distributed to thermal equilibrium. In this system, 32 masses (or particles) can move only left or right, and the energy in the system cannot dissipate through friction or heat. This system, famous among mathematicians and physicists, was introduced by Los Alamos National Laboratory researchers Enrico Fermi, John Pasta, Stanislaw Ulam, and Mary Tsingou as a means to study how heat is conducted in solids and metals.