Carbon Nanotube Thermal Transport: Ballistic to Diffusive

We propose to use l_0/(l_0+L) for the energy transmission covering both ballistic and diffusive regimes, where l_0 is mean free path and L is system length. This formula is applied to heat conduction in carbon nanotubes (CNTs). Calculations of thermal conduction show: (1) Thermal conductance at room temperature is proportional to the diameter of CNTs for single-walled CNTs (SWCNTs) and to the square of diameter for multi-walled CNTs (MWCNTs). (2) Interfaces play an important role in thermal conduction in CNTs due to the symmetry of CNTs vibrational modes. (3) When the phonon mean free path is comparable with the length L of CNTs in ballistic-diffusive regime, thermal conductivity \kappa goes as L^{\alpha} . The effective exponent \alpha is numerically found to decrease with increasing temperature and is insensitive to the diameter of SWCNTs for Umklapp scattering process. For short SWCNTs (<0.1 \mu m) we find \alpha \approx 0.8 at room temperature. These results are consistent with recent experimental findings.Comment: 4 pages, two figure

Dimensional crossover of thermal conductance in nanowires

Dimensional dependence of thermal conductance at low temperatures in nanowires is studied using the nonequilibrium Green's function (NEGF) method. Our calculation shows a smooth dimensional crossover of thermal conductance in nanowire from one-dimensional to three-dimensional behavior with the increase of diameters. The results are consistent with the experimental findings that the temperature dependence of thermal conductance at low temperature for diameters from tens to hundreds nanometers will be close to Debye law. The calculation also suggests that universal thermal conductance is only observable in nanowires with small diameters. We also find that the interfacial thermal conductance across Si and Ge nanowire is much lower than the corresponding value in bulk materials.Comment: 4 figure

Tuning thermal transport in nanotubes with topological defects

Using the atomistic nonequilibrium Green's function, we find that thermal conductance of carbon nanotubes with presence of topological lattice imperfects is remarkably reduced, due to the strong Rayleigh scattering of high-frequency phonons. Phonon transmission across multiple defects behaves as a cascade scattering based with the random phase approximation. We elucidate that phonon scattering by structural defects is related to the spatial fluctuations of local vibrational density of states (LVDOS). An effective method of tuning thermal transport in low-dimensional systems through the modulation of LVDOS has been proposed. Our findings provide insights into experimentally controlling thermal transport in nanoscale devicesComment: 10 pages, 3 figure

A Simple Approach to Functional Inequalities for Non-local Dirichlet Forms

With direct and simple proofs, we establish Poincar\'{e} type inequalities (including Poincar\'{e} inequalities, weak Poincar\'{e} inequalities and super Poincar\'{e} inequalities), entropy inequalities and Beckner-type inequalities for non-local Dirichlet forms. The proofs are efficient for non-local Dirichlet forms with general jump kernel, and also work for $L^p (p>1)$ settings. Our results yield a new sufficient condition for fractional Poincar\'{e} inequalities, which were recently studied in \cite{MRS,Gre}. To our knowledge this is the first result providing entropy inequalities and Beckner-type inequalities for measures more general than L\'{e}vy measures.Comment: 12 page