Abstract
The phonon Boltzmann transport equation (BTE) is a powerful tool for studying nondiffusive thermal transport. Here, we develop a new universal variational approach to solving the BTE that enables extraction of phonon mean free path (MFP) distributions from experiments exploring nondiffusive transport. By utilizing the known Fourier heat conduction solution as a trial function, we present a direct approach to calculating the effective thermal conductivity from the BTE. We demonstrate this technique on the transient thermal grating experiment, which is a useful tool for studying nondiffusive thermal transport and probing the MFP distribution of materials. We obtain a closed form expression for a suppression function that is materials dependent, successfully addressing the nonuniversality of the suppression function used in the past, while providing a general approach to studying thermal properties in the nondiffusive regime.
- Received 24 November 2015
- Revised 7 March 2016
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.93.155201
©2016 American Physical Society