A normal metal tunnel-junction heat diode

Abstract

We propose a low-temperature thermal rectifier consisting of a chain of three tunnel-coupled normal metal electrodes. We show that a large heat rectification is achievable if the thermal symmetry of the structure is broken and the central island can release energy to the phonon bath. The performance of the device is theoretically analyzed and, under the appropriate conditions, temperature differences up to $\sim$ 200 mK between the forward and reverse thermal bias configurations are obtained below 1 K, corresponding to a rectification ratio $\mathcal{R}\sim$ 2000. The simplicity intrinsic to its design joined with the insensitivity to magnetic fields make our device potentially attractive as a fundamental building block in solid-state thermal nanocircuits and in general-purpose cryogenic electronic applications requiring energy management.

4.5 pages, 4 color figures

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Cited by in corpus (7)

• Rectification of electronic heat current by a hybrid thermal diode
• Strong system-bath coupling induces negative differential thermal conductance and heat amplification in nonequilibrium two-qubits systems
• Electronic heat current rectification in hybrid superconducting devices
• Very large thermal rectification in ferromagnetic insulator-based superconducting tunnel junctions
• Phase-coherent heat circulators with normal- or superconducting contacts
• Highly efficient phase-tunable photonic thermal diode
• Phase-dependent heat transport in Josephson junctions with p-wave superconductors and superfluids