Anomalous Thermal Conductivity of Frustrated Heisenberg Spin Chains and Ladders

We study the thermal transport properties of several quantum-spin chains and ladders. We find indications for a diverging thermal conductivity at finite temperatures for the models examined. The temperature at which the nondiverging prefactor kappa((th))(T) peaks is, in general, substantially lower than the temperature at which the corresponding specific heat c(V)(T) is maximal. We show that this result of the microscopic approach leads to a substantial reduction for estimates of the magnetic mean-free path lambda extracted by analyzing recent experiments, as compared to similar analyses by phenomenological theories.