Thermal transport in the Fermi-Pasta-Ulam model with long-range interactions

Abstract: We study the thermal transport properties of the one dimensional Fermi-Pasta-Ulam model ($\beta$-type) with long-range interactions. The strength of the long-range interaction decreases with the (shortest) distance between the lattice sites as ${distance}^{-\delta}$, where $\delta \ge 0$.Two Langevin heat baths at unequal temperatures are connected to the ends of the one dimensional lattice via short-range harmonic interactions that drive the system away from thermal equilibrium. In the nonequilibrium steady state the heat current, thermal conductivity and temperature profiles are computed by solving the equations of motion numerically. It is found that the conductivity $\kappa$ has an interesting non-monotonic dependence with $\delta$ with a maximum at $\delta = 2.0$ for this model. Moreover, at $\delta = 2.0$, $\kappa$ diverges almost linearly with system size $N$ and the temperature profile has a negligible slope, as one expects in ballistic transport for an integrable system. We demonstrate that the non-monotonic behavior of the conductivity and the nearly ballistic thermal transport at $\delta = 2.0$ obtained under nonequilibrium conditions can be explained consistently by studying the variation of largest Lyapunov exponent $\lambda_{max}$ with $\delta$, and excess energy diffusion in the equilibrium microcanonical system.