# Glassy dynamics in strongly anharmonic chains of oscillators

## TL;DR

This paper reviews how strongly anharmonic oscillator chains exhibit glassy dynamics, including intermittency and jamming, due to slow chaotic spots that facilitate energy redistribution near the atomic limit.

## Contribution

It provides a comprehensive review of transport mechanisms and dynamical properties in strongly anharmonic chains, highlighting their glass-like behavior and connections to disordered systems.

## Key findings

- Oscillators remain near integrable with slow chaotic spots.
- Material exhibits intermittency, jamming, and reduced mobility.
- Connections drawn between classical, quantum, and disordered systems.

## Abstract

We review the mechanism for transport in strongly anharmonic chains of oscillators near the atomic limit where all oscillators are decoupled. In this regime, the motion of most oscillators remains close to integrable, i.e. quasi-periodic, on very long time scales, while a few chaotic spots move very slowly and redistribute the energy across the system. The material acquires several characteristic properties of dynamical glasses: intermittency, jamming and a drastic reduction of the mobility as a function of the thermodynamical parameters. We consider both classical and quantum systems, though with more emphasis on the former, and we discuss also the connections with quenched disordered systems, which display a similar physics to a large extent.