Nonlinear Breathing-like Localized Modes in C60 Nanocrystals

TL;DR

This paper investigates nonlinear localized oscillatory modes in C60 nanocrystals, revealing their long lifetimes and potential impact on thermal relaxation properties, which could challenge classical heat conduction laws.

Contribution

It demonstrates the existence of long-lived nonlinear localized modes in C60 nanocrystals and explores their implications for thermal relaxation behavior.

Findings

Localized modes can last over tens of picoseconds at room temperature.

C60 nanoclusters may exhibit anomalously slow thermal relaxation.

Thermal decay follows a power-law, violating classical laws.

Abstract

We study the dynamics of nanocrystals composed of C60 fullerene molecules. We demonstrate that such structures can support long-lived strongly localized nonlinear oscillatory modes, which resemble discrete breathers in simple lattices. We reveal that at room temperatures the lifetime of such nonlinear localized modes may exceed tens of picoseconds; this suggests that C60 nanoclusters should demonstrate anomalously slow thermal relaxation when the temperature gradient decays in accord to a power law, thus violating the Cattaneo-Vernotte law of thermal conductivity.