We investigate the full counting statistics of extreme-near-field radiative heat transfer using nonequilibrium Green's function formalism. In the extreme near field, the electron-electron interactions between two metallic bodies dominate the heat transfer process. We start from a general tight-binding electron Hamiltonian and obtain a Levitov-Lesovik like scaled cumulant generating function (SCGF) using random phase approximation to deal with electron-electron interaction. The expressions of heat current and its fluctuation (second cumulant) are obtained from the SCGF. The fluctuation symmetry relation of the SCGF is verified. In the linear response limit (small temperature gradient), we express the heat current cumulant by a linear combination of lower order cumulants. The heat current fluctuation is $2k_B T^2$ times the thermal conductance with $T$ the average temperature in the linear response limit, and this provides an evaluation of heat current fluctuation by measuring the thermal conductance in extreme-near field-radiative heat transfer.
Calculations of heat transfer between two plates of gold in an extreme near field is performed taking into account the existence of the electric double layer on metal surfaces. For d < 3nm the double layer contribution exceeds the predictions of the conversional theory of the heat transfer by several orders of magnitudes. This effect is due to a coupling between the radiation electric field and the double layer dipole moment. The results obtained can be used for the heat management at the nanoscale by intentionally changing the parameters of surface dipoles with the help of engineering.
We analyze the heat transfer between two metals separated by a vacuum gap in the extreme near-field regime. In this cross-over regime between conduction and radiation, heat exchanges are mediated by photon, phonon and electron tunneling. We quantify the relative contribution of these carriers with respect to both the separation distance between the two bodies and the applied bias voltage. In the presence of a weak bias ($V_{\rm b}<100$~mV), electrons and phonons can contribute equally to the heat transfer near contact, while the contribution of photons becomes negligible. On the other hand, fo…
Crystal Orientation Dependence of Extreme Near-Field Heat Transfer between Polar Materials Governed by Surface Phonon Modes
School of Energy Science and Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology（哈尔滨工业大学能源学院）；Key Laboratory of Aerospace Thermophysics, Ministry of Industry and Information Technology（工业和信息化部航空航天热物理重点实验室）
We theoretically investigate the heat transfer between two metals across a vacuum gap in extreme near-field regime by quantifying the relative contribution of electrons, phonons and photons. We show that electrons play a dominant role in the heat transfer between two metals at subnanometric distance subject to a temperature gradient. Moreover, we demonstrate that this effect is dramatically amplified in the presence of an applied bias voltage. These results could pave the way to novel strategies for thermal management and energy conversion in extreme near-field regime.
A method to calculate the statistics of energy exchange between quantum systems is presented. The generating function of this statistics is expressed through a Keldysh path integral. The method is first applied to the problem of heat dissipation from a biased mesoscopic conductor into the adjacent reservoirs. We then consider energy dissipation in an electrical circuit around a mesoscopic conductor. We derive the conditions under which measurements of the fluctuations of heat dissipation can be used to investigate higher order cumulants of the charge counting statistics of a mesoscopic conduct…
Extreme near-field heat transfer between metallic surfaces is a subject of debate as the state-of-the-art theory and experiments are in disagreement on the energy carriers driving heat transport. In an effort to elucidate the physics of extreme near-field heat transfer between metallic surfaces, this Letter presents a comprehensive model combining radiation, acoustic phonon and electron transport across sub-10-nm vacuum gaps. The results obtained for gold surfaces show that in the absence of bias voltage, acoustic phonon transport is dominant for vacuum gaps smaller than ~2 nm. The application…
This work addresses the statistical thermodynamic features of a Landau-quantized T-3 Dice lattice in a normal magnetic field in the nondegenerate statistical regime. Our study includes analyses of the Grand Potential, magnetic moment, entropy and specific heat at constant volume, with explicit determination of their temperature and magnetic field dependencies. In this, we find that the specific heat at constant volume is negative in the nondegenerate regime, for the Landau-quantized Dice lattice.
We consider a quantum dot system whose charge fluctuations are monitored by a quantum point contact allowing for the detection of both charge and transferred heat statistics. Our system consists of two nearby conductors that exchange energy via Coulomb interaction. In interfaces consisting of capacitively coupled quantum dots, energy transfer is discrete and can be measured by charge counting statistics. We investigate gate dependent deviations away from a charge fluctuation theorem in the presence of local temperature gradients (hot spots). Non universal relations are found for state dependen…
We study the ionization dynamics of Ar clusters exposed to ultrashort near-infrared (NIR) laser pulses for intensities well below the threshold at which tunnel ionization ignites nanoplasma formation. We find that the emission of highly charged ions up to Ar$^{8+}$ can be switched on with unit contrast by generating only a few seed electrons with an ultrashort extreme ultraviolet (XUV) pulse prior to the NIR field. Molecular dynamics simulations can explain the experimental observations and predict a generic scenario where efficient heating via inverse bremsstrahlung and NIR avalanching are fo…
To study the full counting statistics of quantum heat transfer in a driven nonequilibrium spin-boson model, we develop a generalized nonequilibrium polaron-transformed Redfield equation with an auxiliary counting field. This enables us to study the impact of qubit-bath coupling ranging from weak to strong regimes. Without external modulations, we observe maximal values of both steady state heat flux and noise power at moderate coupling regimes, below which we find those two transport quantities are enhanced by the finite qubit energy bias. With external modulations, the geometric-phase-induced…
We analyze the distribution of heat generated in driven single-electron transitions and discuss the related non-equilibrium work theorems. In the adiabatic limit, the heat distribution is shown to become Gaussian, with the heat noise that, in spite of thermal fluctuations, vanishes together with the average dissipated energy. We show that the transitions satisfy Jarzynski equality for arbitrary drive and calculate the probability of the negative heat values. We also derive a general condition on the heat distribution that generalizes the Bochkov-Kuzovlev equality and connects it to the Jarzyns…
Recent experiments at the nanoscales confirm that thermal rectifiers, the thermal equivalent of electrical diodes, can operate in the quantum regime. We present a thorough investigation of the effect of different particle exchange statistics, coherence, and collective interactions on the quantum heat transport of rectifiers with two-terminal junctions. Using a collision model approach to describe the open system dynamics, we obtain a general expression of the nonlinear heat flow that fundamentally deviates from the Landauer formula whenever quantum statistical or coherence asymmetries are pres…
Counter-rotating-wave terms (CRWTs) are traditionally viewed to be crucial in open small quantum systems with strong system-bath dissipation. Here by exemplifying in a nonequilibrium qubit-phonon hybrid model, we show that CRWTs can play the significant role in quantum heat transfer even with weak system-bath dissipation. By using coherent phonon states, we obtain the quantum master equation with heat exchange rates contributed by rotating-wave-terms (RWTs) and CRWTs, respectively. We find that including only RWTs, steady state heat current and current fluctuations will be significantly suppre…
We study heat current and the full statistics of heat fluctuations in a capacitively-coupled double quantum dot system. This work is motivated by recent theoretical studies and experimental works on heat currents in quantum dot circuits. As expected intuitively, within the (static) mean-field approximation, the system at steady-state decouples into two single-dot equilibrium systems with renormalized dot energies, leading to zero average heat flux and fluctuations. This reveals that dynamic correlations induced between electrons on the dots is solely responsible for the heat transport between …
