Nonstationary heat conduction in a single-walled carbon nanotube was investigated by applying a local heat pulse with duration of subpicoseconds. The investigation was based on classical molecular dynamics simulations, where the heat pulse was generated as coherent fluctuations by connecting a thermostat to the local cell for a short duration. The heat conduction through the nanotube was observed in terms of spatiotemporal temperature profiles. Results of the simulations exhibit non-Fourier heat conduction where a distinct amount of heat is transported in a wavelike form. The geometry of carbon nanotubes allows us to observe such a phenomenon in the actual scale of the material. The resulting spatiotemporal profile was compared with the available macroscopic equations, the so-called non-Fourier heat conduction equations, in order to investigate the applicability of the phenomenological models to a quasi-one-dimensional system. The conventional hyperbolic diffusion equation fails to predict the heat conduction due to the lack of local diffusion. It is shown that this can be remedied by adopting a model with dual relaxation time. Further modal analyses using wavelet transformations reveal a significant contribution of the optical phonon modes to the observed wavelike heat conduction. The result suggests that, in carbon nanotubes with finite length where the long-wavelength acoustic phonons behave ballistically, even optical phonons can play a major role in the non-Fourier heat conduction.

• Received 23 February 2006

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.73.205420