Heat transport in weakly anharmonic Fermi-Pasta-Ulam-Tsingou chains

Abstract

We investigate anomalous heat transport in the one-dimensional $β$-Fermi--Pasta--Ulam--Tsingou chain in the weakly anharmonic regime using large-scale equilibrium molecular dynamics. By resolving the heat current into phonon-mode contributions, we show that its long-time autocorrelation is controlled by diagonal mode correlations, whose decay is quantitatively determined by the corresponding phonon damping rates. Extrapolation to the thermodynamic limit gives $Γ_k \propto (βT)^{4/3} k^{5/3}$, with a subleading $k^2$ correction. The latter produces an extended pre-asymptotic regime, $C(t) \sim t^{-4/5}$, before the asymptotic decay $C(t) \sim t^{-3/5}$ is reached, leading to $κ(N) \sim N^{2/5} + O(N^{1/5})$. At weak anharmonicity, off-diagonal mode correlations persist up to a characteristic time $τ_{\mathrm{od}} \sim (βT)^{-2}$, while increasingly large systems are required to resolve the long-wavelength phonon contribution. Weak anharmonicity therefore does not introduce a distinct asymptotic transport mechanism, but shifts the onset of the phonon-dominated regime to progressively longer times and larger length scales.