Random Initial Data and Average Shock Time in the Fermi-Pasta-Ulam-Tsingou Chain

We investigate the dynamics of the Fermi-Pasta-Ulam-Tsingou chain with long-wavelength random initial data. When the energy per particle is small, thermal equilibrium is not reached on a fast timescale, and the system enters prethermalization. The formation of the prethermal state is characterized by the development of a Burgers-type shock and the onset of a turbulentlike spectrum with a time dependent exponent zeta(t) in the inertial range. We perform a significant step forward by demonstrating that these features are robust under generic long-wavelength random initial conditions. By employing advanced probabilistic techniques inspired by the works of Dudley and Talagrand, we derive a sharp asymptotic expression for the average shock time in the thermodynamic limit. For large p, this time scales as (p√log p)⁻¹, where p is the number of excited modes, proving that it is an intensive quantity up to a logarithmic correction in the size of the system.