Thermo-mechanical transport in rotor chains (Q2038954)

In the present paper the authors perform the study of the stationary macroscopic state of chains of rotors with a thermo-mechanical forcing applied at the their boundaries. The stationary state is determined by the temperature and angular momentum profiles which satisfy a nonlinear system of diffusive partial differential equations with boundary conditions determined by the forcing. This system of equations is formally derived on the basis of a linear response argument under the assumption of local equilibrium and considering first order corrections. Various properties of the solutions are studied characterizing the range of parameters in which the phenomenon of uphill energy diffusion arises. Since the energy current is the sum of the heat current and the mechanical energy current, this phenomenon appears when the usual heat diffusion is counterbalanced by an energy current induced by the mechanical forcing, giving rise to a negative energy conductivity. This approach is useful in order to avoid expensive Monte Carlo simulations of the underlying microscopic dynamics. In fact, the authors perform extensive numerical computations by using a finite difference discretization, together with a fixed-point algorithm to address the nonlinearity of the system. The agreement between the results obtained with these simulations and those obtained by previous microscopic dynamics simulations is a good hint of the validity of the macroscopic system.