Anomalous transparency induced by cooperative disorders in phonon transport

Abstract

Wave transport through disordered materials is of broad interest in science and engineering. It has been generally believed that long-range transport cannot exist in low-dimensional disordered systems due to the Anderson localization of all states. However, in this work we report the anomalous transparency of phonon transport induced by cooperative effects of mass and force-constant disorders in completely random harmonic wires. In contrast to the full localization in mass-disordered wire, an anomalous transparent phonon state can emerge due to the intrinsic cooperation of disordered mass and force constants. We obtain the frequency of the transparent state, tuned by the disordered force constants and masses. Consequently, the phonon transport in the completely disordered system falls into three different regimes: the full localization, resonant, and sub-ballistic regimes. While there exists a single nonzero transparent frequency in the resonant regime, transparent states in a wide range of frequencies can be present in the sub-ballistic regime, which significantly enhances the thermal conductivity of disordered wires. These findings may open new doors to modulate thermal transport and design thermal devices, including thermal filter and high-thermal-conductivity materials.