Mesoscopic Description of Radiative Heat Transfer at the Nanoscale

Svend-Age Biehs (1) , Emmanuel Rousseau (1) , Jean-Jacques Greffet (1)

1 Laboratoire Charles Fabry de l'Institut d'Optique / Naphel

We present a formulation of the nanoscale radiative heat transfer using concepts of mesoscopic physics. We introduce the analog of the Sharvin conductance using the quantum of thermal conductance. The formalism provides a convenient framework to analyze the physics of radiative heat transfer at the nanoscale. Finally, we propose a radiative heat transfer experiment in the regime of quantized conductance.

Domains: Optics / Photonic; Optics [physics.optics]

Svend-Age Biehs, Emmanuel Rousseau, Jean-Jacques Greffet. Mesoscopic Description of Radiative Heat Transfer at the Nanoscale. Physical Review Letters, 2010, 105, pp.234301. ⟨10.1103/PhysRevLett.105.234301⟩. ⟨hal-00679136⟩