Temperature-dependent divergence of thermal conductivity in momentum-conserving one-dimensional lattices with asymmetric potential.

Abstract

In this study we used a nonequilibrium simulation method to investigate the temperature dependent divergence of thermal conductivity in a one-dimensional momentum conserving system with an asymmetric double well nearest-neighbor interaction potential. We show that across all temperatures thermal conductivity exhibits power-law divergence with the chain length and the value of the divergence exponent (α) depends on the temperature of the system. At low and high temperatures α reaches close to ∼0.5 and ∼0.33, respectively. Whereas in the intermediate temperature the divergence of thermal conductivity with the chain length saturates with α∼0.07. Subsequent analysis showed that the estimated value of α in the intermediate temperature may not have reached its thermodynamic limit. Further calculations of local α revealed that its approach towards the thermodynamic limit is crucially dependent on the temperature of the system. At low and high temperatures local α reaches its thermodynamic limits in shorter chain lengths. On the contrary, in the case of intermediate temperature its progress towards the asymptotic limit is nonmonotonic.