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Scaling Theory of Heat Transport in Quasi-1D Disordered Harmonic Chains

We introduce a variant of the Banded Random Matrix ensemble and show, using detailed numerical analysis and theoretical arguments, that the phonon heat current in disordered quasi-one-dimensional lattices obeys a one-parameter scaling law. The resulting beta-function indicates that an anomalous Fourier law is applicable in the diffusive regime, while in the localization regime the heat current decays exponentially with the sample size. Our approach opens a new way to investigate the effects of Anderson localization in heat conduction, based on the powerful ideas of scaling theory.