Thermal rectification in the one-dimensional nonlinearly graded rotor lattice robust in the thermodynamical limit

Abstract

Recently, it has been shown that in graded systems, thermal rectification (TR) effect may remain in the thermodynamical limit. Here, by taking the one-dimensional rotor lattice as an illustrating model, we investigate how the graded structure may affect the TR efficiency. In particular, we consider the case where the interaction is assigned with nonlinear polynomial functions. It is found that TR is robust in the thermodynamical limit and meanwhile its efficiency may considerably depend on the details of the graded structure. This finding suggests that it is possible to enhance the TR effect by taking into account the nonlinear graded structure even in large systems.