Heat Coulomb blockade in a double-island metal-semiconductor device

Abstract

We study the thermal transport properties of a mesoscopic device comprising two metallic islands embedded in a two-dimensional electron gas in the integer quantum Hall regime. It is shown that the $2M$ ballistic edge channels connecting the islands to the external reservoirs and the $N$ inter-island channels play a central role in the phenomenon of heat Coulomb blockade. Unlike the single-island case, where the heat flux is reduced by exactly one quantum of thermal conductance, we predict an additional suppression proportional to the factor $M^2/(2N+M{)}^2$. We further examine a configuration in which the islands are placed between electrodes at different temperatures and identify the conditions under which the Wiedemann-Franz law is violated.