Ballistic thermal conductance by phonons through superlattice quantum-waveguides.

Ballistic thermal conductances (BTCs) by phonons through superlattice quantum-waveguides are investigated by using the scattering-matrix method and the elastic continuum theory. A comparison for the cylindrical model (CM) and the rectangular model (RM) is addressed. We find that for these two models, the quantum thermal conductance can be observed even when the superlattices exist in quantum-waveguides. At low temperature, BTCs for the CM and the RM present almost the same behaviors regardless of the periodic length of superlattices. However, at higher temperature, BTCs for the RM are larger than those for the CM stemming from lower cutoff frequencies of high order modes for the RM. We also find that BTCs undergo a noticeable transformation from the monotonic decrease to constant with increasing the periodic number of superlattices. A brief analysis of these results is given. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]