We characterize thermalization slowing down of Josephson junction networks in one, two, and three spatial dimensions for systems with hundreds of sites by computing their entire Lyapunov spectra. The ratio of Josephson coupling $E_J$ to energy density $h$ controls two different universality classes of thermalization slowing down, namely, the weak-coupling regime, $E_J/h\to 0$, and the strong-coupling regime, $E_J/h\to \infty$. We analyze the Lyapunov spectrum by measuring the largest Lyapunov exponent and by fitting the rescaled spectrum with a general ansatz. We then extract two scales: the Lyapunov time (inverse of the largest exponent) and the exponent for the decay of the rescaled spectrum. The two universality classes, which exist irrespective of network dimension, are characterized by different ways the extracted scales diverge. The universality class corresponding to the weak-coupling regime allows for the coexistence of chaos with a large number of near-conserved quantities and is shown to be characterized by universal critical exponents, in contrast with the strong-coupling regime. We expect our findings, which we explain using perturbation theory arguments, to be a general feature of diverse Hamiltonian systems.

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• Statistical phenomena & chaos
• Chaotic systems
• Josephson junctions
• Chaos & nonlinear dynamics