2026/07/24 by Philippe Ben-Abdallah
#cond-mat.mes-hall #physics.optics
We predict the spin thermal Hall effect in nonreciprocal magneto-optical many-body systems, in which a longitudinal radiative heat current generates a transverse accumulation of the spin angular momentum carried by thermal photons. We show that this effect and the inverse spin thermal Hall effect constitute an Onsager-Casimir reciprocal pair, thereby establishing heat and photon spin as coupled transport channels in nonreciprocal photonic systems. The second law of thermodynamics imposes fundamental bounds on the spin-heat coupling, leading to a thermal-spin figure of merit that quantifies the efficiency of radiative spin-heat conversion. Our results establish a complete thermodynamic framework for photon spin caloritronics and lay the conceptual foundations for spin-controlled thermal radiation and nonreciprocal photonic thermal devices.