Aging phenomena in nonlinear dissipative chains

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 t<Subscript>w</Subscript> after the quench of the two-time intermediate correlation function C(t <Subscript> w </Subscript>+t, t <Subscript> w </Subscript>). This function can be scaled onto a master curve, similar to the case of spin or Lennard-Jones glasses. Copyright Springer-Verlag Berlin/Heidelberg 2003