Logarithmic divergent thermal conductivity in two-dimensional nonlinear lattices

Abstract

Heat conduction in three two-dimensional (2D) momentum-conserving nonlinear lattices are numerically calculated via both nonequilibrium heat-bath and equilibrium Green-Kubo algorithms. It is expected by mainstream theories that heat conduction in such 2D lattices is divergent and the thermal conductivity κ increases with lattice length N logarithmically. Our simulations for the purely quartic lattice firmly confirm it. However, very robust finite-size effects are observed in the calculations for the other two lattices, which well explain some existing studies and imply the extreme difficulties in observing their true asymptotic behaviors with affordable computation resources. © 2012 American Physical Society.