A semiclassical study of the thermal conductivity of low temperature liquids

The conventional classical energy current auto-correlation function has been extended into a quantum mechanical version and then approximated by the linearized semiclassical initial value representation approach. Comparison of the thermal conductivity to simulation results shows that about 15% quantum correction to the classical molecular dynamics results for liquid neon are quantitatively predicted. For liquid para-hydrogen the quantum effects are sufficiently large that the linearized semiclassical approach is only 20% accurate, while for both liquid He(4) and He(3) the thermal conductivity disagrees by a factor of 2, although exchange effects appear to play a minor role. (C) 2011 American Institute of Physics. [doi:10.1063/1.3639107]