Local rectification of heat flux

Abstract

-Heat conduction PACS 45.50.Jf -Few-and many-body systemsAbstract -We present a chain-of-atoms model where heat is rectified, with different fluxes from the hot to the cold baths located at the chain boundaries when the temperature bias is reversed. The chain is homogeneous except for boundary effects and a local modification of the interactions at one site, the "impurity". The rectification mechanism is due here to the localized impurity, the only asymmetrical element of the structure, apart from the externally imposed temperature bias, and does not rely on putting in contact different materials or other known mechanisms such as grading or long-range interactions. The effect survives if all interaction forces are linear except the ones for the impurity.

Dynamically induced heat rectification in quantum systems

“…Such device, when connected to two thermal baths at different temperatures, conducts heat asymmetrically if the temperatures of the baths are interchanged. This effect allows for an effective heat dissipation with a suppressed backflow reaction.To date, most theoretical proposals on classical heat rectifiers (see [1] and references therein) have been based either on the use of inohomogenous materials [2-7] exploiting nonlinear interactions, or doping the systems with impurities while remaining in the linear regime [8]. Also, the feasibility of microscopic systems acting as thermal devices has been recently addressed in, for instance, phononic refrigerators in the classical [9] and quantum [10] regimes, or heat rectifiers in diferent platforms: quantum dots [11], nonlinear solid-state quantum circuits [12], few-level systems [13,14], or hybrid configurations [15].Here, we address analytically and in full generality heat rectification in quantum systems under generic linear interactions.…”

Asymmetric heat transport in ion crystals

“…The bands may match or mismatch at the interfaces depending on the sign of the temperature bias of the baths, allowing or obstructing heat flow [2,17]. Later, alternative mechanisms have been also proposed which do not necessarily rely on anharmonic potentials [18,19].…”

Effect of Inter-System Coupling on Heat Transport in a Microscopic Collision Model

“…In this section, we turn our attention to the systems featured by distinct asymmetries, such as the qubits with different frequencies or asymmetric couplings to their reservoirs. Indeed, inspired by the manipulation and control of the thermal transport in micro-scale, such asymmetric systems were widely investigated in the thermal diode and thermal transistor [ 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 , 43 , 44 , 45 ]. In the following, we will study the heat transport and, at the same time, study whether the inter-system interaction can be ignored or not when modeling the system–environment interaction.…”

“…By means of an effective harmonic Hamiltonian, a quantum thermal transport through anharmonic systems was studied within the framework of the nonequilibrium Green’s function method [ 35 ]. Besides, quantum devices such as heat rectifier, thermal memory, and thermal ratchet, have also become goals of controlling thermal transport in quantum thermodynamics [ 36 , 37 , 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 , 43 , 44 , 45 ]. It was found that, by using the quantum master equation, thermal rectification in anisotropic Heisenberg spin chains could change sign when the external homogeneous magnetic field was varied [ 43 ].…”