Prethermalization in a classical phonon field: Slow relaxation of the number of phonons

We investigate the emergence of an astonishingly long prethermal plateau in a classical phonon field, here, a harmonic chain with on-site pinning. Integrability is broken by a weak anharmonic on-site potential with strength lambda. In the small lambda limit, the approach to equilibrium of a translation invariant initial state is described by kinetic theory. However, when the phonon band becomes narrow, we find that the (nonconserved) number of phonons relaxes on much longer timescales than kinetic. We establish rigorous bounds on the relaxation time and develop a theory that yields exact predictions for the dissipation rate in the limit lambda -> 0. We compare the theoretical predictions with data from molecular-dynamics simulations and find good agreement. Our Rapid Communication shows how classical systems may exhibit phenomena which, at the first glance, appear to require quantization.