Heating of a semi-infinite Hooke chain

Abstract: We consider unsteady ballistic heat transport in a semi-infinite Hooke chain with a free end and an arbitrary heat source. An analytical description of the evolution of the kinetic temperature is proposed in both discrete (exact) and continuum (approximate) formulations. The continualization of the discrete solution for kinetic temperature is performed through a large-time asymptotic estimate of the fundamental solution of the dynamical problem for the instantly perturbed conservative semi-infinite chain at the fronts of the incident and reflected thermal waves. By analyzing the continuum solution, we observe that any instantaneous heat supply (i.e., a heat pulse) results in the anti-localization of the reflected thermal wave. We demonstrate that sudden point heat supply leads to a transition to a non-equilibrium steady state, which, unexpectedly, may exist even in the non-dissipative case. The results of this paper are expected to provide insight into the continuum description of nanoscale heat transport.