Resonance, Metastability and Blow-up in FPU

We consider the FPU model with nonlinearity starting with terms of order n ≥ 3. We compute the resonant normal form in the region where only one low-frequency mode is excited and deduce rigorous results on the correspondence between the dynamics of the normal form and that of the complete system. As n varies, we give a criterion in order to deduce whether the FPU phenomenon (formation of a metastable packet of modes) is present or not. The criterion is that, if the normal form equation has smooth solutions then the FPU phenomenon is present, while it is absent if the solutions of the normal form equations have blow up in a finite time. In particular the phenomenon should be present for n ≤ 5 and absent for n ≥ 7.