Energy Transport in Weakly Anharmonic Chains
Abstract
We investigate the energy transport in a one-dimensional lattice of oscillators with a harmonic nearest neighbor coupling and a harmonic plus quartic on-site potential. As numerically observed for particular coupling parameters before, and confirmed by our study, such chains satisfy Fourier's law: a chain of length N coupled to thermal reservoirs at both ends has an average steady state energy current proportional to 1/N. On the theoretical level we employ the Peierls transport equation for phonons and note that beyond a mere exchange of labels it admits nondegenerate phonon collisions. These collisions are responsible for a finite heat conductivity. The predictions of kinetic theory are compared with molecular dynamics simulations. In the range of weak anharmonicity, respectively low temperatures, reasonable agreement is observed.
Cite
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0602082,
title = {Energy Transport in Weakly Anharmonic Chains},
author = {Kenichiro Aoki and Jani Lukkarinen and Herbert Spohn},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0602082},
year = {2007}
}
Comments
25 pages, 10 figures