ISSN 1063-7834, Physics of the Solid State, 2006, Vol. 48, No. 9, pp. 16781680. Pleiades Publishing, Inc.

., 2006.
Original Russian Text N.N. Zholonko , 2006, published in Fizika Tverdogo Tela, 2006, Vol. 48, No. 9, pp. 15871589.

SEMICONDUCTORS
AND DIELECTRICS

Poiseuille Flow of Phonons in Solid Hydrogen

N. N. Zholonko
Cherkassy Khmelnitsky National University, Taras Shevchenko bulv. 79, Cherkassy, 18031 Ukraine
e-mail: zholonko@yahoo.com
Received October 3, 2005

AbstractThe thermal conductivity of solid parahydrogen is investigated using the stationary method with a
plane sample in the temperature range 1.56.0 K in order to reveal a Poiseuille flow in solid hydrogen. It is
established that the thermal conductivity at temperatures below the low-temperature maximum decreases very
rapidly in accordance with the law K ~ T n (3 < n < 8). This finding is a direct indication that the possibility exists
of observing a Poiseuille flow in solid hydrogen. The results obtained are compared with those for solid helium,
in which the Poiseuille flow was observed for the first time in dielectric solids. According to the estimates, the
mean free path of phonons at a temperature of approximately 3 K exceeds the radius of a cylindrical sample
(3 mm). The thermal conductivity in the vicinity of the low-temperature maximum is found to be two times
higher than the value available in the literature.
PACS numbers: 67.80.Gb, 65.40.b
DOI: 10.1134/S1063783406090083

1. INTRODUCTION
When analyzing the heat transfer in the majority of
materials, one usually takes into account only the
inelastic phononphonon scattering (the U process) and
other resistive processes, because, as was inferred by
Peierls [1], the only elastic N processes in a solid cannot
thermalize an initial nonuniform distribution of
phonons. However, detailed analysis performed with
the use of the Boltzmann kinetic equation has demonstrated [2, 3] that, under particular conditions, the
occurrence of normal processes can radically change
the situation observed in a condensed medium and its
thermal conductivity.
At sufficiently high temperatures, the process of
phonon heat transfer resembles a flow of a viscous liquid in a tube. In this heat transfer, the N processes play
the role of elastic collisions between molecules,
whereas the U processes are considered inelastic collisions. It is known that the latter processes bring about
viscous drag. In this case, the mean free path LU of a
phonon prior to the collision in the U process is small
as compared to the size of the crystallite. In the opposite
limiting case of ultralow temperatures, we have the ballistic (Knudsen) regime where the mean free paths LU
and LN exceeds the size of the crystallite. Therefore, the
basic resistive process for a nearly ideal crystal is associated with the grain-boundary scattering.
However, at very low temperatures, the mean free
path LU of phonons in the U processes can significantly
exceed the mean free path LN of phonons in the N processes, because the umklapp processes occurring in the
other band (the U processes) can involve only phonons
with a sufficiently high energy, whereas the N processes

are anharmonic interactions of phonons with any

energy. As the temperature decreases, the probability of
the U processes occurring in a material also decreases
in accordance with the law exp(/T) and the probability of the N processes varies as T 5; i.e., the latter probability is a considerably weaker function of temperature. Therefore, we can assume that, for a nearly ideal
crystal at temperatures below the maximum of the
phonon thermal conductivity, there can most likely
exist a range of temperatures in which the mean free
path LN of phonons involved in the N processes
becomes substantially less than the crystallite size,
whereas the mean free path LU of phonons in the U processes exceeds the crystallite size. It is in this regime
that the Poiseuille flow of phonons occurs, i.e., when
they begin to contribute to heat transfer more efficiently
than in the ballistic regime. Figuratively speaking, the
phonons colliding with each other without a loss of
quasi-momentum as if cease to see the wall [4]. This
implies that the temperature dependence of the thermal
conductivity for the Poiseuille flow of phonons is stronger than the cubic dependence of the thermal conductivity on the temperature in the case of a Knudsen flow;
i.e., K ~ T n with an exponent n > 3 (according to theory,
we have the exponent n = 8 when impurities and other
defects are absent, except at the boundaries of the crystal). As the temperature decreases, the thermal conductivity is described by the relationship with the exponent
n = 3, because, in this case, the N processes are frozen
and the regime becomes ballistic.
It should be noted that the Poiseuille flow is very difficult to realize under conditions of a low-temperature
experiment. Consequently, in the case of dielectrics,
this rare phenomenon has thus far been observed only

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POISEUILLE FLOW OF PHONONS IN SOLID HYDROGEN

2. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The results of investigations into the temperature
dependence of the thermal conductivity of solid hydrogen purified with a palladium filter are presented on a
loglog scale in Fig. 1. In contrast to the sublimated
samples studied in [6, 7], the solid hydrogen sample
used in this work was grown from a liquid phase. As in
our previous experiments [6, 7], no additional conversion from orthohydrogen to parahydrogen was performed. As follows from the experimental results, the
quality of the sample proved to be substantially better.
This is confirmed by the high thermal conductivity at
the maximum (it is equal to 2000 W/(m K) instead of
the value of 1000 W/(m K) reported in [6]). It is interesting to note that these values are characteristic of very
pure metals and are not typical of conventional dielectrics [4] (measurement of the electrical resistance of the
sample was not provided in the experiment). It can be
seen from Fig. 1 that the low-temperature dependence
of the thermal conductivity K ~ T 3 at the lowest temperatures is very clearly pronounced (crosses). It is also
seen that the points to the left of the maximum correspond to an exponent n > 3.
Figure 2 presents the results of calculating the mean
free path of phonons L according to the data on the thermal conductivity from all the preceding studies of solid
hydrogen and those reported in this paper. The mean
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104

~ T 4.5
~ T3

103

K, W/(m K)

~ T10

K, W/(m K)

in solid and liquid 4He, for which it has become possible to prepare samples with a very pure isotopic composition, an absence of impurities, and a crystal structure free of defects [4, 5]. This situation is illustrated in
the inset to Fig. 1. It is known that, owing to the appreciable zero-point vibrations, helium crystals can exist
only under pressure; i.e., they are not free crystal systems. Solid hydrogen, which is also considered a quantum crystal, can solidify at a temperature of approximately 13.8 K without application of an additional
pressure. Therefore, in contrast to helium, hydrogen
can be used to prepare free-standing samples without
the application of pressure. Hydrogen in the gaseous
state has a unique ability to penetrate through metals,
thus almost completely purifying them from impurities
(to a concentration of no higher than 108), for example,
with a palladium or nickel tube. The equilibrium concentration of orthohydrogen molecules (0.2%) can be
considerably decreased by conversion from orthohydrogen to parahydrogen, especially since the natural
content of deuterium isotopes is relatively low
(0.015%). Hence, this dielectric, as a free crystal, can
be used to realize a regime of low-temperature thermal
conduction with a Poiseuille flow of phonons. In our
earlier work [6], such an attempt was made with the use
of solid parahydrogen crystals grown from a gaseous
phase through sublimation; however, an exponent n > 3
was not obtained.

1679

103
102

T8
T3

10
1
0.3 0.6 1.0 2.0 3.0

102

20
1.5

2.0

3.0
T, K

4.0

5.0 6.0

Fig. 1. Temperature dependence of the thermal conductivity

of solid hydrogen in comparison with the corresponding
dependence obtained for solid helium (the inset is taken
from the paper by Mezhov-Deglin [5], who was the first to
observe the Poiseuille flow of phonons): the dot-dashed line
shows the dependence plotted according to the data taken
from Bohn and Mate [8]; the solid line corresponds to the
data taken from Gorodilov et al. [9]; circles are the data
taken from our previous work [6], in which the samples
were grown from a gaseous phase through sublimation after
the hydrogen was purified with a palladium filter (the equilibrium concentration of orthohydrogen molecules was
0.2%); crosses indicate the data reported in this paper for a
sample grown from a liquid phase (jointly with B.Ya. Gorodilov and A.I. Krivchikov); and squares represent the
results obtained for the same sample after thermal shock
(rapid cooling).

free path of phonons was calculated from a simple gaskinetic relationship,

3K
L = -------- ,
Cv

(1)

where C is the specific heat and v is the velocity of

sound. It can be noted for the best of the samples that,
as the temperature decreases, the mean free path L of
phonons reaches a maximum and the tendency toward
a further decrease in the mean free path becomes especially pronounced. Taking into account that n > 3 for
the data on the thermal conductivity, this result indicates the possible occurrence of a Poiseuille flow in the
sample under investigation. It is seen that the maximum
value of the mean free path L exceeds the radius of the
sample (3 mm).
Unfortunately, the dispersion of the experimental
points in the upper portion of the obtained curve for the
thermal conductivity of pure solid parahydrogen and
their insufficient number do not allow us to decide with

1680

ZHOLONKO

3. CONCLUSIONS
Thus, the results reported in this paper have demonstrated that, in the best of the equilibrium samples of
solid hydrogen under investigation, we observed the
Poiseuille flow of phonons with a high probability.
However, further investigation is required to make this
conclusion more reliable.

5
3
2

L, mm

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This work was supported by the Verkin Institute of
Low-Temperature Physics and Engineering of the
National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (Kharkov).

101

REFERENCES
102

1.5

2.0

3.0

4.0

5.0

T, K
Fig. 2. Temperature dependence of the mean free path of
phonons in solid hydrogen. The dashed line represents the
result of the recalculation using the data taken from [9]. The
other designations correspond to those used in Fig. 1. The
calculations were performed according to the simple gaskinetic relationship (1) for the thermal conductivity with
data on the specific heat of solid hydrogen from [10].

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crystal system. The large random errors can be
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atoms and the related laborious studies of the thermal
conductivity curves. For a number of reasons, we could
not return to more comprehensive investigations of
pure hydrogen with a more efficient heat transfer, i.e.,
after the precision equipment was substantially modernized.

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Translated by O. Moskalev

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