Small perturbation of a disordered harmonic chain by a noise and an anharmonic potential

Cédric Bernardin, François Huveneers

Published 2011-11-28, updated 2013-10-05Version 2

We study the thermal properties of a pinned disordered harmonic chain weakly perturbed by a noise and an anharmonic potential. The noise is controlled by a parameter $\lambda \rightarrow 0$, and the anharmonicity by a parameter $\lambda' \le \lambda$. Let $\kappa$ be the conductivity of the chain, defined through the Green-Kubo formula. Under suitable hypotheses, we show that $\kappa = \mathcal O (\lambda)$ and, in the absence of anharmonic potential, that $\kappa \sim \lambda$. This is in sharp contrast with the ordered chain for which $\kappa \sim 1/\lambda$, and so shows the persitence of localization effects for a non-integrable dynamics.