Many body heat radiation and heat transfer in the presence of a non-absorbing background medium

Abstract

Heat radiation and near-field radiative heat transfer can be strongly manipulated by adjusting geometrical shapes, optical properties, or the relative positions of the objects involved. Typically these objects are considered as embedded in vacuum. By applying the methods of fluctuational electrodynamics, we derive general closed-form expressions for heat radiation and heat transfer in a system of $N$ arbitrary objects embedded in a passive non-absorbing background medium. Taking into account the principle of reciprocity, we explicitly prove the symmetry and positivity of transfer in any such system. Regarding applications, we find that the heat radiation of a sphere as well as the heat transfer between two parallel plates is strongly enhanced by the presence of a background medium. Regarding near- and far-field transfer through a gas like air, we show that a microscopic model (based on gas particles) and a macroscopic model (using a dielectric contrast) yield identical results. We also compare the radiative transfer through a medium like air and the energy transfer found from kinetic gas theory.

21 pages, 17 figures

References in corpus (10)

• Measurement of the Temperature Dependence of the Casimir-Polder Force
• Radiative heat transfer between nanostructures
• New asymptotic behaviour of the surface-atom force out of thermal equilibrium
• Effect of the Casimir-Polder force on the collective oscillations of a trapped Bose-Einstein condensate
• Effects of spatial dispersion in near-field radiative heat transfer between two parallel metallic surfaces
• Casimir-Lifshitz force out of thermal equilibrium
• A Green's function formalism of energy and momentum transfer in fluctuational electrodynamics
• Fluctuational electrodynamics of hyperbolic metamaterials
• Non equilibrium dissipation-driven steady many-body entanglement
• Casimir forces between cylinders at different temperatures

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Ballistic near-field heat transport in dense many-body systems
• Radiative heat transfer between metallic nanoparticle clusters in both near field and far field
• Fluctuational electrodynamics for nonlinear materials in and out of thermal equilibrium