Quantum thermal transport through anharmonic systems: A self-consistent approach

Abstract

We propose a feasible and effective approach to study quantum thermal transport through anharmonic systems. The main idea is to obtain an {\it effective} harmonic Hamiltonian for the anharmonic system by applying the self-consistent phonon theory. Using the effective harmonic Hamiltonian we study thermal transport within the framework of nonequilibrium Green's function method using the celebrated Caroli formula. We corroborate our quantum self-consistent approach using the quantum master equation that can deal with anharmonicity exactly, but is limited to the weak system-bath coupling regime. Finally, in order demonstrate its strength we apply the quantum self-consistent approach to study thermal rectification in a weakly coupled two segment anharmonic system.

7 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (8)

• Heat Transport in low-dimensional systems
• Quantum thermal transport in nanostructures
• Heat transport in harmonic lattices
• Sufficient conditions for thermal rectification in hybrid quantum structures
• Origin of negative differential thermal resistance in a chain of two weakly coupled nonlinear lattices
• Effective phonons in anharmonic lattices: anomalous vs normal heat conduction
• Thermal conductivity of anharmonic lattices: Effective phonons and quantum corrections
• Improved Dyson series expansion for steady-state quantum transport beyond the weak coupling limit - divergences and resolution

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Non-linear transport in an out-of-equilibrium single-site Bose Hubbard model: scaling, rectification and time dynamics