2009/04/30 by Nianbei Li, Fei Zhan, Peter Hänggi +2 · 1 citation
Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Mechanical and Optical Resonators #Nonlinear Photonic Systems #Thermal properties of materials #cond-mat.stat-mech
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreve.80.011125
published as Phys. Rev. E 80, 011125 (2009) · 9 pages, 10 figures. Phys. Rev. E (in press)
arxiv created 2009/06/28 · openalex publication_date 2009/07/21 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We investigate directed thermal heat flux across one-dimensional homogenous nonlinear lattices when no net thermal bias is present on average. A nonlinear lattice of Fermi-Pasta-Ulam-type or Lennard-Jones-type system is connected at both ends to thermal baths which are held at the same temperature on temporal average. We study two different modulations of the heat bath temperatures, namely: (i) a symmetric, harmonic ac driving of temperature of one heat bath only and (ii) a harmonic mixing drive of temperature acting on both heat baths. While for case (i) an adiabatic result for the net heat transport can be derived in terms of the temperature-dependent heat conductivity of the nonlinear lattice a similar such transport approach fails for the harmonic mixing case (ii). Then, for case (ii), not even the sign of the resulting Brownian motion induced heat flux can be predicted a priori. A nonvanishing heat flux (including a nonadiabatic reversal of flux) is detected which is the result of an induced dynamical symmetry breaking mechanism in conjunction with the nonlinearity of the lattice dynamics. Computer simulations demonstrate that the heat flux is robust against an increase of lattice sizes. The observed ratchet effect for such directed heat currents is quite sizable for our studied class of homogenous nonlinear lattice structures, thereby making this setup accessible for experimental implementation and verification.