Spintronics-based mesoscopic heat engine

Abstract

We consider a nanowire suspended on two spin-polarized leads and subject to a nonuniform magnetic field. We show that in such a system a temperature drop between leads can significantly affect the nanowire dynamics. In particular, it is demonstrated that under certain conditions the stationary distribution of the mechanical subsystem has Boltzmann form with effective temperature which is smaller than the temperature of the "cold" lead; this seems rather counterintuitive. We also find that the change of the direction of the temperature gradient results in generation of mechanical vibrations rather than heating of the mechanical subsystem.

5 pages, 3 figures

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• Charge-vibration interaction effects in normal-superconductor quantum dots
• Spin-mediated photomechanical coupling of a nanoelectromechanical shuttle
• Effect of inter-system coupling on heat transport in a microscopic collision model
• Cyclic Superconducting Quantum Refrigerators Using Guided Fluxon Propagation
• Ground state cooling of nanomechanical resonators by electron transport
• Cooling of nanomechanical vibrations by Andreev injection