Heat transfer control using a thermal analogue of coherent perfect absorption

Recent investigations on non-Hermitian physics have unlocked new possibilities to manipulate wave scattering on lossy materials. Coherent perfect absorption is such an effect that enables all-light control by incorporating a suitable amount of loss. On the other hand, controlling heat transfer with...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Nature communications 2022-05, Vol.13 (1), p.2683-2683, Article 2683
Main Authors: Li, Ying, Qi, Minghong, Li, Jiaxin, Cao, Pei-Chao, Wang, Dong, Zhu, Xue-Feng, Qiu, Cheng-Wei, Chen, Hongsheng
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
639/624/399/1015
639/766/25
639/766/400
Absorption
Coherent scattering
Diffusion
Exergy
Heat transfer
Humanities and Social Sciences
Light effects
Metamaterials
Momentum
multidisciplinary
Science
Science (multidisciplinary)
Steady state
Wave scattering
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Summary:Recent investigations on non-Hermitian physics have unlocked new possibilities to manipulate wave scattering on lossy materials. Coherent perfect absorption is such an effect that enables all-light control by incorporating a suitable amount of loss. On the other hand, controlling heat transfer with heat may empower a distinct paradigm other than using thermal metamaterials. However, since heat neither propagates nor carries any momentum, almost all concepts in wave scattering are ill-defined for steady-state heat diffusion, making it formidable to understand or utilize any coherent effect. Here, we establish a scattering theory for heat diffusion by introducing an imitated momentum for thermal fields. The thermal analogue of coherent perfect absorption is thus predicted and demonstrated as the perfect absorption of exergy fluxes and undisturbed temperature fields. Unlike its photonic counterpart, thermal coherent perfect absorption can be realized for regular thermal materials, and be generalized for various objects. A thermal analogue of coherent perfect absorption would allow to control heat transfer using heat, but the lack of momentum propagation in a thermal field seems to prevent any role for coherence. Here, the authors allow this by introducing an imitated momentum for steady-state heat diffusion.
ISSN:2041-1723
2041-1723
DOI:10.1038/s41467-022-30023-1