Reconstructing Fourier's law from disorder in quantum wires

Abstract

The theory of open quantum systems is used to study the local temperature and heat currents in metallic nanowires connected to leads at different temperatures. We show that for ballistic wires the local temperature is almost uniform along the wire and Fourier's law is invalid. By gradually increasing disorder, a uniform temperature gradient ensues inside the wire and the thermal current linearly relates to this local temperature gradient, in agreement with Fourier's law. Finally, we demonstrate that while disorder is responsible for the onset of Fourier's law, the non-equilibrium energy distribution function is determined solely by the heat baths.

References in corpus (17)

• Third quantization: a general method to solve master equations for quadratic open Fermi systems
• Heat transport in harmonic lattices
• Fourier's Law for a Harmonic Crystal with Self-consistent Stochastic Reservoirs
• Quantum thermal transport from classical molecular dynamics
• Effect of phonon-phonon interactions on localization
• Existence of temperature on the nanoscale
• Stochastic Time-Dependent Current-Density-Functional Theory
• Fourier's Law in a Quantum Spin Chain and the Onset of Quantum Chaos
• Heat conduction and Fourier's law by consecutive local mixing and thermalization
• Heat flux operator, current conservation and the formal Fourier's law
• Crossover from ballistic to diffusive thermal transport in quantum Langevin dynamics study of a harmonic chain connected to self-consistent reservoirs
• Fourier's Law from Closure Equations
• Quantum Mechanical Heat Transport in Disordered Harmonic Chains
• Microscopic Quantum Mechanical Foundation of Fourier's Law
• Transition from diffusive to ballistic dynamics for a class of finite quantum models
• Effective single-particle order-N scheme for the dynamics of open non-interacting many-body systems
• Information compressibility, entropy production and approach to steady state in open systems