We address the question of the effect of disorder on heat conduction in an anharmonic chain with interactions given by the Fermi-Pasta-Ulam (FPU) potential. In contrast to the conclusions of an earlier paper [Phys. Rev. Lett. 86, 63 (2001)], which found that disorder could induce a finite thermal conductivity at low temperatures, we find no evidence of a finite-temperature transition in conducting properties. Instead, we find that at low temperatures, small system-size transport properties are dominated by disorder but the asymptotic system size dependence of current is given by the usual FPU result $J\sim 1∕N^{2∕3}$. We also present interesting results on the binary-mass ordered FPU chain.

• Received 4 July 2008

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.78.061136