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Updated: Oct 28, 2025

Evolution of Staircase Structures in Diffusive Convection
Published on: September 5, 2018
Effects of interplay between disorder and anharmonicity on heat conduction
Jinyuan Zhu1, Yue Liu1, Dahai He1
1Department of Physics and Jiujiang Research Institute, Xiamen University, Xiamen 361005, Fujian, China.
Abstract:
Heat conduction through a disordered Fermi-Pasta-Ulam-β (DFPU-β) chain is studied. The presence of disorder makes the heat current behave significantly different from that of the ordered Fermi-Pasta-Ulam-β (FPU-β) chain. Thanks to the interplay between disorder and anharmonicity, a nonmonotonic-monotonic transition occurs when the disorder strength increases. That is, a peak for the heat current emerges for weak disorder; however, monotonic increasing of the heat current shows up for strong disorder. This can be understood based on the competition between two effects of anharmonicity on phonons, namely, delocalization and phonon-phonon scattering, which is shown by the spectral decomposition of heat current.
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