Thermal conduction in classical low-dimensional lattices

Deriving macroscopic phenomenological laws of irreversible thermodynamics from simple microscopic models is one of the tasks of non-equilibrium statistical mechanics. We consider stationary energy transport in crystals with reference to simple mathematical models consisting of coupled oscillators on a lattice. The role of lattice dimensionality on the breakdown of the Fourier’s law is discussed and some universal quantitative aspects are emphasized: the divergence of the finite-size thermal conductivity is characterized by universal laws in one and two dimensions. Equilibrium and non-equilibrium molecular Preprint submitted to Physics Reports 14 March 2008 dynamics methods are presented along with a critical survey of previous numerical results. Analytical results for the non-equilibrium dynamics can be obtained in the harmonic chain where the role of disorder and localization can be also understood. The traditional kinetic approach, based on the Boltzmann-Peierls equation is also briefly sketched with reference to one-dimensional chains. Simple toy models can be defined in which the conductivity is finite. Anomalous transport in integrable nonlinear systems is briefly discussed. Finally, possible future research themes are outlined.