Fundamental limits to radiative heat transfer: the limited role of nanostructuring in the near field

Abstract

In a complementary article, we exploited algebraic properties of Maxwell's equations and fundamental principles such as electromagnetic reciprocity and passivity, to derive fundamental limits to radiative heat transfer applicable in near- through far-field regimes. The limits depend on the choice of material susceptibilities and bounding surfaces enclosing arbitrarily shaped objects. In this article, we apply these bounds to two different geometric configurations of interest, namely dipolar particles or extended structures of infinite area in the near field of one another, and compare these predictions to prior limits. We find that while near-field radiative heat transfer between dipolar particles can saturate purely geometric "Landauer" limits, bounds on extended structures cannot, instead growing much more slowly with respect to a material response figure of merit, an "inverse resistivity" for metals, due to the deleterious effects of multiple scattering; nanostructuring is unable to overcome these limits, which can be practically reached by planar media at the surface polariton condition.

References in corpus (15)

• Opposites Attract - A Theorem About The Casimir Force
• Radiative heat transfer between nanostructures
• A mesoscopic description of radiative heat transfer at the nanoscale
• Fundamental limits to optical response in absorptive systems
• Enhancing Near-Field Radiative Heat Transfer with Si-based Metasurfaces
• A scattering approach to Casimir forces and radiative heat transfer for nanostructured surfaces out of thermal equilibrium
• Fundamental limits for non-contact transfers between two bodies
• Shape-Independent Limits to Near-Field Radiative Heat Transfer
• The effectiveness of thin films in lieu of hyperbolic metamaterials in the near field
• Fluctuating volume-current formulation of electromagnetic fluctuations in inhomogeneous media: incandecence and luminescence in arbitrary geometries
• Radiative heat transfer between metallic gratings using adaptive spatial resolution
• Length dependence of the thermal conductance of alkane-based single-molecule junctions: An ab-initio study
• Fundamental limits to near-field optical response, over any bandwidth
• Fundamental limits to radiative heat transfer: theory
• Overcoming limits to near-field radiative heat transfer in uniform planar media through multilayer optimization

Cited by in corpus (22)

• Near-field Radiative Heat Transfer in Many-Body Systems
• Upper bounds on absorption and scattering
• Fundamental limits to radiative heat transfer: theory
• Perspective on Near-Field Radiative Heat Transfer
• Global $\mathbb{T}$ operator bounds on electromagnetic scattering: Upper bounds on far-field cross sections
• Time-modulated near-field radiative heat transfer
• Trace Expressions and Associated Limits for Non-Equilibrium Casimir Torque
• Normal heat diffusion in many-body system via thermal photons
• Fundamental bounds for scattering from absorptionless electromagnetic structures
• Breakdown of detailed balance for thermal radiation by synthetic fields
• Topological phonon polariton enhanced radiative heat transfer in bichromatic nanoparticle arrays mimicking Aubry-André-Harper model
• Fundamental Bounds on the Performance of Monochromatic Passive Cloaks
• Tight bounds and the role of optical loss in polariton-mediated near-field heat transfer
• General trace formula for heat flux fluctuations
• Mechanical relations between conductive and radiative heat transfer
• Channel-based algebraic limits to conductive heat transfer
• Performance Bounds of Magnetic Traps for Neutral Particles
• Superconducting Coherence Peak in Near-Field Radiative Heat Transfer
• Physical limits on electromagnetic response
• Fundamental Bounds to Time-Harmonic Quadratic Metrics in Electromagnetism: Overview and Implementation
• Reflectors Tune Near-Field Thermal Transport
• $\mathbb{T}$-Operator Limits on Optical Communication: Metaoptics, Computation, and Input-Output Transformations