English

Kramers barrier crossing as a cooling machine

Mesoscale and Nanoscale Physics 2015-05-18 v1

Abstract

The achievement of local cooling is a prominent goal in the design of functional transport nanojunctions. One generic mechanism for local cooling is driving a system through a local uphill potential step. In this paper we examine the manifestation of this mechanism in the context of the Kramers barrier crossing problem. For a particle crossing a barrier, the local effective temperature and the local energy exchange with the thermal environment are calculated, and the coefficient of performance of the ensuing cooling process is evaluated.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1002.4556,
  title  = {Kramers barrier crossing as a cooling machine},
  author = {Philip R. Schiff and Abraham Nitzan},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1002.4556},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

12 pages, 5 figures

R2 v1 2026-06-21T14:50:42.207Z