Nonequilibrium steady states of some simple 1-D mechanical chains (Q2429396)

The authors study the non-equilibrium steady states (NESS) for some 1D mechanical models with \(N\) moving particles on a line segment connected to unequal heat baths. Many such models are known to exhibit an anomalous behavior when they are out of equilibrium: Fourier's law breaks down, heat conductivity diverges, there is no normal diffusion. The authors use three models that corresponds to these `pathologies' and attempt to `improve' their dynamics in successive steps. the first model consists of \(N\) particles of equal mass moving freely and colliding in a bounded 1D segment, the two ends of which are connected to unequal heat baths. The second model is the same as the first model, except that each particle is confined to its own interval; adjacent intervals overlap permitting collisions of neighboring particles. The third model is the same as the second one, except the particles have slightly varying, randomly drawn masses. In successive sections of this paper (respectively, Sections 2, 3, 4), detailed considerations about proposed improvements are given. They are summarized in Section 5. (i) For \(N\) particles moving freely and colliding in a 1D segment connected to unequal heat baths, in NESS, the mean energy is constant along the chain and marginal energy distributions are mixtures, or weighted averages of two different Gaussians. (ii) While transport in 1D is often anomalous, some models can exhibit quite ``normal'' dynamics. Specifically, by trapping particles to prevent ballistic transport of energy and randomizing masses to enable repeated repartitioning of energy.