Construction of cubic nonlinear lattice free from umklapp processes

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new cubic nonlinear lattice free from umklapp processes, demonstrating through analytical and numerical methods that it exhibits near-ballistic thermal transport and suppresses umklapp interactions.

Contribution

The paper develops an analytical framework for a cubic nonlinear lattice that eliminates umklapp processes and explores its thermal transport properties through simulations.

Findings

The proposed lattice completely suppresses umklapp processes.

It exhibits thermal transport closer to ballistic behavior.

Long-range interactions significantly influence the lattice properties.

Abstract

We propose a novel type of umklapp-free lattice (UFL), where umklapp processes are completely absent. The proposed UFL incorporates cubic long-range nonlinearity, a feature not addressed in previous studies. In this paper, we derive an analytical expression for the cubic nonlinear coupling constants by imposing mathematical conditions such that the nonlinear coupling strength between particle pairs decays inversely with their separation distance. The absence of umklapp processes in the proposed lattice is confirmed through numerical comparisons with the Fermi-Pasta-Ulam-Tsingou (FPUT) lattice. Furthermore, molecular dynamics simulations are performed to investigate the thermal conductivity of the proposed lattice in the non-equilibrium steady state. Compared to the original FPUT lattice, the proposed UFL is closer to ballistic transport. Our results demonstrate that the umklapp processes induced by cubic nonlinearity are suppressed in the proposed UFL. Moreover, compared to the UFL with only quartic nonlinearity, truncation of long-range interactions plays a significant role in the proposed lattice.