Many-Body Radiative Heat Transfer Theory

Abstract

In this Letter a N -body theory for the radiative heat exchange in thermally non equilibrated discrete systems of finite size objects is presented. We report strong exaltation effects of heat flux which can be explained only by taking into account the presence of many body interactions. Our theory extends the standard Polder and van Hove stochastic formalism used to evaluate heat exchanges between two objects isolated from their environment to a collection of objects in mutual interaction. It gives a natural theoretical framework to investigate the photon heat transport properties of complex systems at mesoscopic scale.PACS numbers: 44.40.+a, 03.50.De The photon heat tunneling between two bodies has attracted much attention in the last decades since it has been predicted that the heat flux (HF) can exceed, at nanoscale, the far field limit set by Planck's black body law by several orders of magnitude [1,2]. This discovery has opened the way to promising technologies for energy conversion and data storage as for example the near-field thermophotovoltaics [3,4] and the plasmon assisted nanophotolitography [5]. This dramatic increase is generally speaking due to the contribution of evanescent modes, which are not accounted for in the StefanBoltzmann law and become only important if the distance between the objects is smaller than the thermal wavelength [6]. The detailed mechanisms which lead to such an enhancement are nowadays for a number of geometries and materials well understood [6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20][21][22] and recent experiments [23][24][25][26][27] have confirmed all theoretical predictions both qualitatively and quantitatively.However, some questions of fundamental importance remain unsolved in complex mesoscopic systems. Indeed, so far, only the HF between two objects [6-9] out of equillibrium has been considered, but how does the heat transport for a collection of individual objects in mutual interaction look like? The collective effects in such many particle systems has not been explored yet, although it is of prime importance for understanding the different heat propagation regimes in disordered systems, determining the thermal percolation tresholds in random nanocomposites structures and studying thermal effects due to the presence of localized modes in such systems.Inside a discrete system of bodies maintained at different temperatures the local thermal fluctuations give rise to oscillations of partial charges which, in turn, radiate their own time dependent electric field in the surrounding medium. These thermally generated fields interact with the nearby bodies and modify through different cross interactions all these primary fields to generate secondary fields which in turn affect the radiated fields and so on. Generally speaking, this problem belongs to the vast category of many-body problems which constitute the theoretical framework of numerous branches of physics (celestial mechanics,condensed matter physics, atomic physics, quantum chemistry). A general th...

Photon Thermal Hall Effect

“…Therefore a heat flux propagates transversally to the primary applied temperature gradient. Using the Landauer formalism for N-body systems [8][9][10][11][12][13] the heat flux exchanged between the i th and the j th particle in the network reads…”

Radiative heat transfer between nanoparticles: Shape dependence and three-body effect

“…Each a) Electronic mail: mnik@znu.ac.ir particle in a many-body system, acts as a scatterer of the radiative energy. As a result, the particles shapes and dielectric functions are main issues, together with their geometric arrangement in the system [41][42][43][44][45][46][47] . The majority of recent studies in heat flux between nanoparticles in three-body systems have focused on heat flux modification by relative position, sizes and orientation of particles.…”

“…We show that a small mismatch of shapes has a giant effect on the radiative heat transfer in a three-body system. A framework we have used in calculating heat transfer, is based on Landauer formalism for N-body system 43 , extended to anisotropic nanoparticles 46 . We have calculated the transmission probability between two particles in the presence of the third particle.…”

Three-body radiation dynamics in systems with anisotropic nanoparticles

“…It is shown in many publications that the heat flux exchange between two objects can be remarkably enhanced in a three-body system with respect to a two-body system, thanks to many-body interactions. In [25], Ban-Abdallah et al used the fluctuational electrodynamics theorem to develop a theoretical formalism for radiative heat transfer between spherical nanoparticles in a many-body system in the dipole limit. They have shown a configurational resonance in heat exchange between nanoparticles due to many-body interactions.…”