Liapunov exponents in high-dimensional symplectic dynamics

The existence of a thermodynamic limit of the distribution of Liapunov exponents is numerically verified in a large class of symplectic models, ranging from Hamiltonian flows to maps and products of random matrices. In the highly chaotic regime this distribution is approximately model-independent. Near an integrable limit only a few exponents give a relevant contribution to the Kolmogorov-Sinai entropy