No Arabic abstract
Recent experimental advances probing coherent phonon and electron transport in nanoscale devices at contact have motivated theoretical channel-based analyses of conduction based on the nonequilibrium Greens function formalism. The transmission through each channel has been known to be bounded above by unity, yet actual transmissions in typical systems often fall far below these limits. Building upon recently derived radiative heat transfer limits and a unified formalism characterizing heat transport for arbitrary bosonic systems in the linear regime, we propose new bounds on conductive heat transfer. In particular, we demonstrate that our limits are typically far tighter than the Landauer limits per channel and are close to actual transmission eigenvalues by examining a model of phonon conduction in a 1-dimensional chain. Our limits have ramifications for designing molecular junctions to optimize conduction.
We present a general nonequilibrium Greens function formalism for modeling heat transfer in systems characterized by linear response that establishes the formal algebraic relationships between phonon and radiative conduction, and reveals how upper bounds for the former can also be applied to the latter. We also propose an extension of this formalism to treat systems susceptible to the interplay of conductive and radiative heat transfer, which becomes relevant in atomic systems and at nanometric and smaller separations where theoretical descriptions which treat each phenomenon separately may be insufficient. We illustrate the need for such coupled descriptions by providing predictions for a low-dimensional system of carbyne wires in which the total heat transfer can differ from the sum of its radiative and conductive contributions. Our framework has ramifications for understanding heat transfer between large bodies that may approach direct contact with each other or that may be coupled by atomic, molecular, or interfacial film junctions.
We study the interplay of conductive and radiative heat transfer (RHT) in planar geometries and predict that temperature gradients induced by radiation can play a significant role on the behavior of RHT with respect to gap sizes, depending largely on geometric and material parameters and not so crucially on operating temperatures. Our findings exploit rigorous calculations based on a closed-form expression for the heat flux between two plates separated by vacuum gaps $d$ and subject to arbitrary temperature profiles, along with an approximate but accurate analytical treatment of coupled conduction--radiation in this geometry. We find that these effects can be prominent in typical materials (e.g. silica and sapphire) at separations of tens of nanometers, and can play an even larger role in metal oxides, which exhibit moderate conductivities and enhanced radiative properties. Broadly speaking, these predictions suggest that the impact of RHT on thermal conduction, and vice versa, could manifest itself as a limit on the possible magnitude of RHT at the nanoscale, which asymptotes to a constant (the conductive transfer rate when the gap is closed) instead of diverging at short separations.
Near-field radiative heat transfer between bodies at the nanoscale can surpass blackbody limits on thermal radiation by orders of magnitude due to contributions from evanescent electromagnetic fields, which carry no energy to the far-field. Thus far, principles guiding explorations of larger heat transfer beyond planar structures have assumed utility in surface nanostructuring, which can enhance the density of states, and further assumed that such design paradigms can approach Landauer limits, in analogy to conduction. We derive fundamental shape-independent limits to radiative heat transfer, applicable in near- through far-field regimes, that incorporate material and geometric constraints such as intrinsic dissipation and finite object sizes, and show that these preclude reaching the Landauer limits in all but a few restrictive scenarios. Additionally, we show that the interplay of material response and electromagnetic scattering among proximate bodies means that bodies which maximize radiative heat transfer actually maximize scattering rather than absorption. Finally, we compare our new bounds to existing Landauer limits, as well as limits involving bodies maximizing far-field absorption, and show that these lead to overly optimistic predictions. Our results have ramifications for the ultimate performance of thermophotovoltaics and nanoscale cooling, as well as related incandescent and luminescent devices.
We derive shape-independent limits to the spectral radiative heat-transfer rate between two closely spaced bodies, generalizing the concept of a black body to the case of near-field energy transfer. Through conservation of energy and reciprocity, we show that each body of susceptibility $chi$ can emit and absorb radiation at enhanced rates bounded by $|chi|^2 / textrm{Im} chi$, optimally mediated by near-field photon transfer proportional to $1/d^2$ across a separation distance $d$. Dipole--dipole and dipole--plate structures approach restrict
The two spin-channel model is generalized to the case of transport of ferromagnetic excitations in electric conductors and insulators. The two channels are defined by reducing the ferromagnetic degrees of freedom to a bivaluated variable, i.e. to an effective spin one-half. The reduction is performed after defining the local magnetic configuration space by a sphere $Sigma_x$, and integrating the relevant physical quantities over the two hemispheres $Sigma_x^{uparrow}$ and $Sigma_x^{downarrow}$. The configuration space is then extended to the $x$ direction for non-uniform magnetization excitations. The transport equations for both magnetic moments and magnetic energy are deduced, including the relaxation from one channel to the other. The heat transport equations for ferromagnets is deduced.