A
deduction of Fourier's law of heat transport from microscopic
deterministic Hamiltonian dynamics is still missing, even on a
heuristic level. Furthermore, divergence of the thermal conductivity
is observed numerically in some one-dimensional system of oscillators.
In physics literature often these problems are connected to the
chaoticity (or the lack of it).
I will present some recent rigorous mathematical results on a chain of
oscillators whose Hamiltonian dynamics is perturbed by a (local) noise
term that conserves total energy (and possibly total momentum). In
finite systems this noise destroys all integrals of the motion except
energy (and possibly momentum), so these systems are nicely ergodic on
shells of constant energy (and possibly momentum).
The decay of the energy current time correlation function C(t) can be
estimated. In the case where only energy is conserved, thermal
conductivity (TC) always remains finite in the limit of infinite
system size, but when also momentum is conserved TC may diverge in
dimensions 1 and 2. In the harmonic case C(t) can be computed
explicitly and we prove that thermal conductivity is finite for d>2
or
if an on-site potential is present, while it diverges if
d=1 or 2.
In the case of harmonic interactions, we obtain the convergence of the
Wigner distribution of the energy to a phonon Boltzman equation in the
proper limit, and the thermal conductivity can then be computed from
this kinetic equation.
In the case that only energy is conserved and all interactions are
harmonic, Fourier's law can be obtained from the stationary
non-equilibrium states, through an entropy production argument.
In the case of an-harmonic interactions, the microscopic deduction of
Fourier's law is still a very difficult mathematical problem, even in
the presence of noise. I will present a possible mathematical
approach, based on the so-called ''non-gradient'' method used in
hydrodynamic limits, and show some surprising numerical results in the
one- dimensional case.