Heat conduction in chains of non-locally coupled harmonic oscillators: mean-field limit

TL;DR

This paper analyzes heat conduction in one-dimensional chains of harmonically coupled particles with mean-field long-range interactions, revealing that heat flux decreases as 1/N with system size, regardless of momentum conservation or mass heterogeneity.

Contribution

It provides an analytical study of heat transport in mean-field coupled harmonic chains, including effects of mass heterogeneity and momentum conservation, using non-equilibrium Green operator formalism.

Findings

Heat flux decays as 1/N for identical masses.

Results agree with thermal behavior of systems with small mass heterogeneity.

Heat conduction behavior is independent of momentum conservation and Kac factor presence.

Abstract

We consider one-dimensional systems of all-to-all harmonically coupled particles with arbitrary masses, subject to two Langevin thermal baths. The couplings correspond to the mean-field limit of long-range interactions. Additionally, the particles can be subject to a harmonic on-site potential to break momentum conservation. Using the non-equilibrium Green operator formalism, we calculate the transmittance, the heat flow and local temperatures, for arbitrary configurations of masses. For identical masses, we show analytically that, the heat flux decays with the system size $N$, as $1/N$, regardless of the conservation or not of the momentum, and of the introduction or not of a Kac factor. These results describe in good agreement the thermal behavior of systems with small heterogeneity in the masses.