Non-equilibrium statistical mechanics of strongly anharmonic chains of oscillators

We study the model of a strongly non-linear chain of particles coupled to two heat baths at different temperatures. Our main result is the existence and uniqueness of a stationary state at all temperatures. This result extends those of Eckmann, Pillet, Rey-Bellet [EPR99a, EPR99b] to potentials with essentially arbitrary growth at infinity. This extension is possible by introducing a stronger version of Hormander's theorem for Kolmogorov equations to vector fields with polynomially bounded coefficients on unbounded domains.