  We have developed a new theoretical formalism for phonon transport in
nanostructures using the nonequilibrium phonon Green's function technique and
have applied it to thermal conduction in defective carbon nanotubes. The
universal quantization of low-temperature thermal conductance in carbon
nanotubes can be observed even in the presence of local structural defects such
as vacancies and Stone-Wales defects, since the long wavelength acoustic
phonons are not scattered by local defects. At room temperature, however,
thermal conductance is critically affected by defect scattering since incident
phonons are scattered by localized phonons around the defects. We find a
remarkable change from quantum to classical features for the thermal transport
through defective CNTs with increasing temperature.
