Recent progress in the concurrent atomistic-continuum method and its application in phonon transport

This work presents the recent progress in the development of the concurrent atomistic-continuum (CAC) method for coarse-grained space- and time-resolved atomistic simulations of phonon transport. Application examples, including heat pulses propagating across grain boundaries and phase interfaces, as well as the interactions between phonons and moving dislocations, are provided to demonstrate the capabilities of CAC. The simulation results provide visual evidence and reveal the underlying physics of a variety of phenomena, including phonon focusing, wave interference, dislocation drag, interfacial Kapitza resistance caused by quasi-ballistic phonon transport, etc. A new method to quantify fluxes in transient transport processes is also introduced.