Ratcheting heat flux against a thermal bias

2008/04/30 by Nianbei Li, Peter Hänggi, Peter Hanggi +1 · 5 citations
Engineering · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #Condensed matter physics #Flux (metallurgy) #Heat flux #Heat transfer #Materials science #Mechanics #Physics #Ratchet #Stylized fact #Thermal #Thermal Radiation and Cooling Technologies #Thermal properties of materials #Thermodynamics #Work (physics) #cond-mat.stat-mech

paper · pdf · doi:10.1209/0295-5075/84/40009

published as EPL 84 (2008) 40009 · 5 pages, 6 figures

openalex publication_date 2008/11/01 · arxiv created 2008/12/01 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05

Abstract

Merely rocking the temperature in one heat bath can direct a steady heat flux from cold to hot against a (time-averaged) non-zero thermal bias in stylized nonlinear lattice junctions that are sandwiched between two heat baths. Likewise, for an average zero-temperature difference between the two contacts a net, ratchet-like heat flux emerges. Computer simulations show that this very heat flux can be manipulated and even reversed by suitably tailoring the frequency (≲100 MHz) of the alternating-temperature field.

Citations

• The design of a thermal rectifier
• Brownian Refrigerator

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