Aging phenomena in nonlinear dissipative chains

Abstract.We study the energy relaxation in a one-dimensional nonlinear lattice with dissipative couplings. After thermalisation of this system, the extremities of the chain are put in contact with a zero-temperature reservoir, showing the existence of surprising quasi-stationary states with non zero energy, tough the dissipative coupling is high. This strange behavior, due to long-lived nonlinear localized modes, induces stretched exponential relaxation laws. Furthermore, we observe a strong dependence on the waiting time tw after the quench of the two-time intermediate correlation function C(tw+t, tw). This function can be scaled onto a master curve, similar to the case of spin or Lennard-Jones glasses.