Lattice thermal conductivity of LaSe

The phonon dispersions and phonon density of states of LaSe are obtained, based on density functional perturbation theory and the norm-conserving pseudo-potential method. An anomaly in calculated phonon dispersion curves is presented and interpreted as a Kohn anomaly. The heat capacity of LaSe is calculated then. For the three-phonon process scattering, the lowest non-harmonic cubic terms of the interatomic potential are considered to obtain single-phonon relaxation rate by applying the Fermi's golden rule. For the boundary scattering, the average phonon relaxation time was obtained. Considering two kinds of phonon scattering mechanisms, we obtain the lattice thermal conductivity of LaSe.