Current progress on heat conduction in one-dimensional gas channels

Abstract

We give a brief review of the past development of model studies on one-dimensional heat conduction. Particularly, we describe recent achievements on the study of heat conduction in one-dimensional gas models including the hard-point gas model and billiard gas channel. For a one-dimensional gas of elastically colliding particles of unequal masses, heat conduction is anomalous due to momentum conservation, and the divergence exponent of heat conductivity is estimated as α≈0.33 in κ ∼ Lº. Moreover, in billiard gas models, it is found that exponent instability is not necessary for normal heat conduction. The connection between heat conductivity and diffusion is investigated. Some new progress is reported. A recently proposed model with a quantized degree of freedom to study the heat transport in quasi-one dimensional systems is illustrated in which three distinct temperature regimes of heat conductivity are mani-fested. The establishment of local thermal equilibrium (LTE) in homogeneous and heterogeneous systems is also discussed. Finally, we give a summary with an outlook for further study about the problem of heat conduction.