At very low temperatures, the tunnelling theory for amorphous solids predicts a thermal conductivity κ α Tm, with m = 2. However, most of the data in the literature in the temperature range 0.1–1 K report an m < 2. We want to show that this discrepancy often disappears for T→ 0 K. Here we report the case of Polyvinyl Chloride (PVC) whose thermal conductivity is known in the 0.2–100 K temperature range. A new technique is described which makes the measurement of the exponent m of the thermal conductivity independent of the spurious thermal power. Such technique is particularly useful for measurements of κ when working with a low power refrigerator. We carried out measurements down to 50 mK, obtaining a thermal conductivity \({\kappa = (1.8 \pm 0.1) \times 10^{-4} T^{(2.05\pm 0.05)}}\) W/cm K for our PVC sample below 120 mK.
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Risegari, L., Barucci, M., Olivieri, E. et al. Low Temperature Thermal Conductivity of PVC. J Low Temp Phys 144, 49–59 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10909-006-9222-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10909-006-9222-8