No abstract

The complex refractive indices of polymers have important applications in the analysis of their components and the study of radiation endothermic mechanisms. Since these materials have high transmittance in the visible to near-infrared ranges, it is difficult to accurately measure their complex refractive indices. At present, the data for complex refractive indices of polymers are seriously lacking, which greatly limits the applications of these materials in the field of thermal radiation. In this work, spectroscopic ellipsometry (SE) combined with the ray tracing method (RTM) is used to measure the complex refractive indices of five polymers, polydimethylsiloxane, poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA), polycarbonate, polystyrene, and polyethylene terephthalate, in the spectral range of 0.4–2 µm. The double optical pathlength transmission method (DOPTM) is used to measure the complex refractive indices of three polymers, PMMA, polyvinyl chloride, and polyetherimide, in the 0.4–2 µm range. The complex refractive index of PMMA measured by the DOPTM almost coincides with the data measured by SE combined with the RTM. The results show that the trends of the complex refractive indices spectra for the seven polymers in the 0.4–2 µm range are similar. This work makes up for the lack of complex refractive indices in the 0.4–2 µm range for these seven materials and points out the direction for accurate measurements of the complex refractive indices of polymers with weak absorption.

No abstract

The many-body radiative heat transfer theory [P. Ben-Abdallah, S.-A. Biehs, and K. Joulain, Phys.Rev. Lett. 107, 114301 (2011)] only considered the contribution from the electric dipole moment. For metal particles, however, the magnetic dipole moment due to eddy current plays an important role, which can further couple with the electric dipole moment to introduce crossed terms. In this work, we develop coupled electric and magnetic dipole (CEMD) approach for the radiative heat transfer in a collection of objects in mutual interaction. Due to the coupled electric and magnetic interactions, four terms, namely the electric-electric, the electric-magnetic, the magnetic-electric and the magnetic-magnetic terms, contribute to the radiative heat flux and the local energy density. The CEMD is applied to study the radiative heat transfer between various dimers of nanoparticles. It is found that each of the four terms can dominate the radiative heat transfer depending on the position and composition of particles.Moreover, near-field many-body interactions are studied by CEMD considering both dielectric and metallic nanoparticles. The near-field radiative heat flux and local energy density can be greatly increased when the particles are in coupled resonances. Surface plasmon polariton and surface phonon polariton can be coupled to enhance the radiative heat flux.