Thermal conductivity in 1d: disorder-induced transition from anomalous to normal scaling

TL;DR

This paper investigates how strong disorder in one-dimensional harmonic chains affects thermal conductivity, revealing a transition from anomalous to normal Fourier-like heat transport despite persistent localization effects.

Contribution

It demonstrates that strong disorder can suppress anomalous thermal conductivity scaling in 1D systems, leading to normal heat conduction.

Findings

Weak coupling and strong disorder alter the power-law scaling of thermal conductivity.

Strong disorder causes the thermal conductivity to follow Fourier's law despite localization.

Two anomalously scaling quantities cancel each other, restoring normal heat transport.

Abstract

It is well known that the contribution of harmonic phonons to the thermal conductivity of 1D systems diverges with the harmonic chain length $L$ (explicitly, increases with $L$ as a power-law with a positive power). Furthermore, within various one-dimensional models containing disorder it was shown that this divergence persists, with the thermal conductivity scaling as $\sqrt{L}$ under certain boundary conditions, where $L$ is the length of the harmonic chain. Here we show that when the chain is weakly coupled to the heat reservoirs and there is strong disorder this scaling can be violated. We find a weaker power-law dependence on $L$, and show that for sufficiently strong disorder the thermal conductivity stops being anomalous -- despite both density-of-states and the diverging localization length scaling anomalously. Surprisingly, in this strong disorder regime two anomalously scaling quantities cancel each other to recover Fourier's law of heat transport.