Localized heat diffusion in topological thermal materials

Abstract

Various unusual behaviors of artificial materials are governed by their topological properties, among which the edge state at the boundary of a photonic or phononic lattice has been captivated as a popular notion. However, this remarkable bulk-boundary correspondence and the related phenomena are missing in thermal materials. One reason is that heat diffusion is described in a non-Hermitian framework because of its dissipative nature. The other is that the relevant temperature field is mostly composed of modes that extend over wide ranges, making it difficult to be rendered within the tight-binding theory as commonly employed in wave physics. Here, we overcome the above challenges and perform systematic studies on heat diffusion in thermal lattices. Based on a continuum model, we introduce a state vector to link the Zak phase with the existence of the edge state, and thereby analytically prove the thermal bulk-boundary correspondence. We experimentally demonstrate the predicted edge states with a topologically protected and localized heat dissipation capacity. Our finding sets up a solid foundation to explore the topology in novel heat transfer manipulations.

References in corpus (5)

• Coherent Perfect Absorbers: Time-reversed Lasers
• Loss-induced suppression and revival of lasing
• Efficient Light Funneling based on the non-Hermitian Skin Effect
• Bulk-boundary correspondence from the inter-cellular Zak phase
• Edge states of a diffusion equation in one dimension: Rapid heat conduction to the heat bath

Cited by in corpus (11)

• Controlling mass and energy diffusion with metamaterials
• Topological thermal transport
• Higher-Order Topological In-Bulk Corner State in Pure Diffusion Systems
• Higher-order topological heat conduction on a lattice for detection of corner states
• Selectable diffusion direction with topologically protected edge modes
• Observation of Multiple Topological Corner States in Thermal Diffusion
• Hierarchical Topological States in Thermal Diffusive Networks
• Extended-localized transition in diffusive quasicrystals
• Convection-modulated topological edge mode and extended-localized criticality in thermal metamaterials
• Scattering symmetry of diffusive systems
• Non-Hermitian physics and topological phenomena in convective thermal metamaterials