  We consider the classical dynamics of two particles moving in harmonic
potential wells and interacting with the same external environment (HE),
consisting of N non-interacting chaotic systems. The parameters are set so that
when either particle is separately placed in contact with the environment, a
dissipative behavior is observed. When both particles are simultaneously in
contact with HE an indirect coupling between them is observed only if the
particles are in near resonance. We study the equilibrium properties of the
system considering ensemble averages for the case N=1 and single trajectory
dynamics for N large. In both cases, the particles and the environment reach an
equilibrium configuration at long times, but only for large N a temperature can
be assigned to the system.
