Phonon heat conduction in layered anisotropic crystals

The thermal properties of anisotropic crystals are of both fundamental and practical interest, but transport phenomena in anisotropic materials such as graphite remain poorly understood because solutions of the Boltzmann equation often assume isotropy. Here, we extend an analytic solution of the transient, frequency-dependent Boltzmann equation to highly anisotropic solids and examine its predictions for graphite. We show that this simple model predicts key results, such as long c-axis phonon mean free paths and a negative correlation of cross-plane thermal conductivity with in-plane group velocity, that were previously observed with computationally expensive molecular-dynamics simulations. Further, using our analytic solution, we demonstrate a method to reconstruct the anisotropic mean free path spectrum of crystals with arbitrary dispersion relations without any prior knowledge of their harmonic or anharmonic properties using observations of quasiballistic heat conduction. These results provide a useful analytic framework to understand thermal transport in anisotropic crystals.