Crossover between different universality classes: Scaling for thermal transport in one dimension

Department of Physics, Fuzhou University - Fuzhou 350108, Fujian, China

^(a) phyxiongdx@fzu.edu.cn

Received: 21 October 2015
Accepted: 11 January 2016

Abstract

For thermal transport in one-dimensional (1D) systems, recent studies have suggested that employing different theoretical models and different numerical simulations under different system's parameter regimes might lead to different universality classes of the scaling exponents. In order to well understand the universality class(es), here we perform a direct dynamics simulation for two archetype 1D oscillator systems with quite different phonon dispersions under various system's parameters and find that there is a crossover between the different universality classes. We show that by varying anharmonicity and temperatures, the space-time scaling exponents for the systems with different dispersions can be feasibly tuned in different ways. The underlying picture is suggested to be understood by phonons performing various kinds of continuous-time random walks (in most cases, be the Lévy walks but not always), probably induced by the peculiar phonon dispersions along with nonlinearity. The results and suggested mechanisms may provide insights into controlling the transport of heat in some 1D materials.