Ratcheting Heat Flux against a Thermal Bias

Abstract

Merely rocking the temperature in one heat bath can direct a steady heat flux from cold to hot against a non-zero thermal bias in stylized nonlinear lattice junctions that are sandwiched between two heat baths. Likewise, for an average zero-temperature difference between the two contacts a net, ratchet-like heat flux emerges. Computer simulations show that this very heat flux can be controlled and reversed by suitably tailoring the frequency ($\lesssim$ 100 MHz) of the alternating temperature field.

5 pages, 6 figures

References in corpus (5)

• Thermal Logic Gates: Computation with phonons
• Thermal rectification and negative differential thermal resistance in lattices with mass gradient
• The design of a thermal rectifier
• Chiral Brownian heat pump
• Two simple models of classical heat pumps

Cited by in corpus (2)

• Artificial Brownian motors: Controlling transport on the nanoscale
• Suppression of thermally activated escape by heating