Equilibrium fluctuations for the disordered harmonic chain perturbed by an energy conserving noise

Abstract

We investigate the macroscopic energy diffusion of a disordered harmonic chain of oscillators, whose hamiltonian dynamics is perturbed by a degenerate conservative noise. After rescaling space and time diffusively, we prove that the equilibrium energy fluctuations evolve according to a linear heat equation. The diffusion coefficient is obtained from Varadhan’s non-gradient approach, and is equivalently defined through the Green-Kubo formula. Since the perturbation is very degenerate and the symmetric part of the generator does not have a spectral gap, the standard non-gradient method is reviewed under new perspectives.