Related papers: Heat engine driven by photon tunneling in many-bod…
Resonant tunneling of surface polaritons across a subwavelength vacuum gap between two polar or metallic bodies at different temperatures leads to an almost monochromatic heat transfer which can exceed by several orders of magnitude the…
We propose a near-field inelastic thermoelectric heat engine where quantum-dots are used to effectively rectify the charge flow of photo-carriers. The device converts near-field heat radiation into useful electrical power. Heat absorption…
Thermophotovoltaics, devices that convert thermal infrared photons to electricity, offer a key pathway for a variety of critical renewable energy technologies including thermal energy storage, waste heat recovery, and direct solar-thermal…
We show that the maximum work that can be obtained from the thermal radiation emitted between two planar sources in the near-field regime is much larger than that corresponding to the blackbody limit. This quantity as well as an upper bound…
We discuss a quantum thermal machine that generates power from a thermally driven double quantum dot coupled to normal and superconducting reservoirs. Energy exchange between the dots is mediated by electron-electron interactions. We can…
The minimal-coupling quantum heat engine is a thermal machine consisting of an explicit energy storage system, heat baths, and a working body, which alternatively couples to subsystems through discrete strokes -- energy-conserving two-body…
Modern technologies could soon make it possible to investigate the operation cycles of quantum heat engines by counting the photons that are emitted and absorbed by their working systems. Using the quantum jump approach to open-system…
The concept of thermal machines has evolved from the canonical steam engine to the recently proposed nanoscopic quantum systems as working fluids. The latter obey quantum open system dynamics and frequently operate in non-equilibrium…
We study the near-field heat exchange between hyperbolic materials and demonstrate that these media are able to support broadband frustrated modes which transport heat by photon tunnelling with a high efficiency close to the theoretical…
In the close vicinity of a hot body, at distances smaller than the thermal wavelength, a high electromagnetic energy density exists due to the presence of evanescent fields radiated by the partial charges in motion around its surface. This…
We introduce a new class of mesoscopic heat engines consisting of a tunnel junction coupled to a linear thermal bath. Work is produced by transporting electrons up against a voltage bias like in ordinary thermoelectrics but heat is…
Solid-state heat-to-electrical power converters are thermodynamic engines that use fundamental particles, such as electrons or photons, as working fluids. Virtually all commercially available devices are thermoelectric generators, in which…
Quantum thermodynamics supplies a consistent description of quantum heat engines and refrigerators up to the level of a single few level system coupled to the environment. Once the environment is split into three;a hot, cold and work…
Thermophotovoltaic devices are energy-conversion systems generating an electric current from the thermal photons radiated by a hot body. In far field, the efficiency of these systems is limited by the thermodynamic Schockley-Queisser limit…
We present a thermal engine that exploits the \emph{cooperative superradiance} and \emph{superabsorption} of a sample of \(N\) two-level atoms. This engine operates using a single cold reservoir via cycles of collective pumping followed by…
Many-body physics aims to understand emergent properties of systems made of many interacting objects. This article reviews recent progress on the topic of radiative heat transfer in many-body systems consisting of thermal emitters…
We propose a nanoscale heat engine that utilizes the physics of resonant tunneling in quantum dots in order to transfer electrons only at specific energies. The nanoengine converts heat into electrical current in a multiterminal geometry…
Using a block of three separated solid elements, a thermal source and drain together with a gate made of an insulator-metal transition material exchanging near-field thermal radiation, we introduce a nanoscale analog of a field-effect…
We consider two modifications of a recently proposed three-terminal quantum dot heat engine. First, we investigate the necessity of the thermalization assumption, namely that electrons are always thermalized by inelastic processes when…
We explore energy transfer in a generic three-level system, which is coupled to three non-equilibrium baths. Built on the concept of quantum heat engine, our three-level model describes non-equilibrium quantum processes including…