We study the rectification of near-field radiative heat transfer between two InSb nano-particles due to the presence of non-reciprocal surface modes in a nearby InSb sample when an external magnetic field is applied and its dependence on the magnetic field strength. We reveal the spin-spin coupling mechanism of the localized particle resonances and the surface mode resonances which is substantiated by the directional heat flux in the given setup. We discuss further the interplay of the frequency shift, the propagation length, and local density of states on the strength and directionality of the rectification as well as the non-reciprocal heating effect of the nanoparticles.
We demonstrate the possibility to rectify the nanoscale radiative heat flux between two nanoparticles by coupling them with the nonreciprocal surface modes of a magneto-optical substrate in a Voigt configuration. When the non-reciprocal medium supports a surface wave in the spectral window where heat exchanges take place the rectification coefficient can reach large values opening so the way to the design of true thermal diodes.
Current understanding of thermal rectification asserts that the rectification ratio (R), which measures the relative heat flux between two ends of a nanostructure, is determined by its geometric asymmetry. The higher the asymmetry, the higher the R. However, by using nonequilibrium molecular dynamics method we have calculated thermal transport in Si nanocones as an example, the results show that such an understanding may be incorrect and R may not increase monotonically with geometric asymmetry. Rather, R exhibits a sharp reverse when the vertex angle (θ) of the nanocone is approximately 90°. …
The manipulation of symmetry provides an effective way to tailor the physical orders in solid-state systems. With the breaking of both the inversion and time-reversal symmetries, non-reciprocal magneto-transport may emerge in assorted non-magnetic systems to enrich spintronic physics. Here, we report the observation of the uni-directional magneto-resistance (UMR) in the lattice-matched InSb/CdTe film up to room temperature. Benefiting from the strong built-in electric field of $0.13 \mathrm{~V} \cdot \mathrm{nm}^{-1}$ in the hetero-junction region, the resulting Rashba-type spin-orbit coupling…
We study the nonequilibrium Seebeck spin transport across metal-magnetic insulator interfaces. The conjugate-converted thermal-spin transport is assisted by the exchange interaction at the interface, between conduction electrons in the metal lead and localized spins in the insulating magnet lead. We predict the rectification and negative differential spin Seebeck effect and resolve their microscopic mechanism, as a consequence of the strongly-fluctuated electronic density of states in the metal lead. The rectification of spin Peltier effect is also discussed. The phenomena predicted here are r…
We study how translationally invariant couplings of many-particle systems and nonequilibrium baths can be used to rectify particle currents, for which we consider minimal setups to realize bath-induced currents in nonequilibrium steady states of one-dimensional open fermionic systems. We first analyze dissipative dynamics associated with a nonreciprocal Lindblad operator and identify a class of Lindblad operators that are sufficient to acquire a unidirectional current. We show that unidirectional particle transport can in general occur when a Lindblad operator is reciprocal provided that the i…
We study the single impurity problem in the non-Hermitian lattice described by the non-reciprocal Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model and obtain the phase diagram of localized bound states induced by the impurity. The existence of analytical results permits us to determine the phase boundaries exactly, which separate regions with different number of bound states. Particularly, in the limit of strong impurity potential, we find that the phase boundaries of mid-gap bound states are identical to the boundaries of topological phase diagrams of the bulk system in the absence of impurity. The existence of co…
We examine the robustness of single-molecule tunneling diodes to thermal-environmental effects. The diode comprises three fragments: two different conjugated chemical groups at the boundaries, and a saturated moiety in between, breaking conjugation. In this setup, molecular electronic levels localized on the conjugated groups independently shift with applied bias. While in the forward polarity a resonance condition is met, enhancing conductance, in the reversed direction molecular electronic states shift away from each other, resulting in small tunneling currents. In the absence of interaction…
A prominent feature of some one-dimensional non-Hermitian systems is that all right-eigenstates of the non-Hermitian Hamiltonian are localized in one end of the chain. The topological and trivial phases are distinguished by the emergence of zero-energy modes within the skin states in the presence of the chiral symmetry. Skin states are formed when the system is nonreciprocal, where it is said nonreciprocal if the absolute values of the right- and left-going hoppings amplitudes are different. Indeed, the zero-energy edge modes emerge at both edges in the topological phase of the reciprocal non-…
Thermal Rectification from Size-Dependent Phonon Confinement in Nanoparticle Assemblies
Università degli Studi di Milano（米兰大学）；Interdisciplinary Centre for Nanostructured Materials and Interfaces (CIMaINa)（纳米材料与界面跨学科中心）；German Aerospace Centre (DLR), Institute of Space Research（德国航空航天中心空间研究所）；Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt (PTB) Berlin（德国联邦物理技术研究院）
Wireless technology relies on the conversion of alternating electromagnetic fields to direct currents, a process known as rectification. While rectifiers are normally based on semiconductor diodes, quantum mechanical non-reciprocal transport effects that enable highly controllable rectification have recently been discovered. One such effect is magnetochiral anisotropy (MCA), where the resistance of a material or a device depends on both the direction of current flow and an applied magnetic field. However, the size of rectification possible due to MCA is usually extremely small, because MCA rel…
Non-Hermiticity from non-reciprocal hoppings has been shown recently to demonstrate the non-Hermitian skin effect (NHSE) under open boundary conditions (OBCs). Here we study the interplay of this effect and the Anderson localization in a \textit{non-reciprocal} quasiperiodic lattice, dubbed non-reciprocal Aubry-André model, and a \textit{rescaled} transition point is exactly proved. The non-reciprocity can induce not only the NHSE, but also the asymmetry in localized states with two Lyapunov exponents for both sides. Meanwhile, this transition is also topological, characterized by a winding nu…
Non-Hermitian Skin Effect from Radiative Coupling in a Reciprocal Chiral Medium
The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology（香港科技大学）；Institute for Advanced Study, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology（香港科技大学高等研究院）
We study the role of thermal magnons in the spin and heat transport across a normal-metal/insulating-ferromagnet interface, which is beyond an elastic electronic spin transfer. Using an interfacial exchange Hamiltonian, which couples spins of itinerant and localized orbitals, we calculate spin and energy currents for an arbitrary interfacial temperature difference and misalignment of spin accumulation in the normal metal relative to the ferromagnetic order. The magnonic contribution to spin current leads to a temperature-dependent torque on the magnetic order parameter; reciprocally, the coher…
Surface acoustic waves (SAWs) are elastic waves localized on a surface of an elastic body. We theoretically study topological edge modes of SAWs for a corrugated surface. We introduce a corrugation forming a triangular lattice on the surface of an elastic body. We treat the corrugation as a perturbation, and construct eigenmodes on a corrugated surface by superposing those for the flat surface at wavevectors which are mutually different by reciprocal lattice vectors. We thereby show emergence of Dirac cones at the $K$ and $K'$ points analytically. Moreover, by breaking the time-reversal symmet…
Manipulation of mechanical motion at the micro-scale has been attracting continuous attention, leading to the successful implementation of various strategies with potential impact on classical and quantum information processing. We here propose an approach based on the interplay between a pair of localized mechanical resonators and travelling surface acoustic waves (SAW). We demonstrate the existence of a two-sided interaction, allowing to use SAW to trigger and control the resonator oscillation, and to manipulate the elastic energy distribution on the substrate through resonator coupling. Obs…
Symmetry-protected spectral topology in non-Hermitian systems has interesting manifestations such as dynamically anomalous chiral currents and skin effect. We study the interplay between symmetries and disorder in a paradigmatic model for spectral topology - the non-reciprocal Su-Schrieffer-Heeger model. We numerically study the effect of disorder in on-site and non-reciprocal hopping terms. Using a real-space winding number, we investigate the impact of disorder on the spectral topology and the anomalous chiral modes under periodic boundary conditions. We discover a remarkable robustness of c…
We have studied the propagation characteristics of spin wave modes in a permalloy stripe by time-resolved magneto-optical Kerr effect techniques. We observe a beating interference pattern in the time domain under the influence of an electrical square pulse excitation at the center of the stripe. We also probe the non-reciprocal behavior of propagating spin waves with a dependence on the external magnetic field. Spatial dependence studies show that localized edge mode spin waves have a lower frequency than spin waves in the center of the stripe, due to the varying magnetization vector across th…
While chirality imbalances are forbidden in conventional lattice systems, non-Hermiticity can effectively avoid the chiral-doubling theorem to facilitate 1D chiral dynamics. Indeed, such systems support unbalanced unidirectional flows that can lead to the localization of an extensive number of states at the boundary, known as the non-Hermitian skin effect (NHSE). Recently, a generalized (rank-2) chirality describing a 2D robust gapless mode with dispersion $ω=k_{x}k_{y}$ has been introduced in crystalline systems. Here we demonstrate that rank-2 chirality imbalances can be established in a non…
