Acoustic phonon tunneling and heat transport due to evanescent electric fields

The authors describe how acoustic phonons can directly tunnel through vacuum and, therefore, transmit energy and conduct heat between bodies that are separated by a vacuum gap. This effect is enabled by introducing a coupling mechanism, such as piezoelectricity, that strongly couples electric field...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Physical review letters 2010-09, Vol.105 (12), p.125501-125501, Article 125501
Main Authors: Prunnila, Mika, Meltaus, Johanna
Format: Article
Language:English
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:The authors describe how acoustic phonons can directly tunnel through vacuum and, therefore, transmit energy and conduct heat between bodies that are separated by a vacuum gap. This effect is enabled by introducing a coupling mechanism, such as piezoelectricity, that strongly couples electric field and lattice deformation. The electric field leaks into the vacuum as an evanescent field, which leads to finite solid-vacuum-solid transmission probability. Because of strong resonances in the system, some phonons can go through the vacuum gap with (or close to) unity transmission, which leads to significant thermal conductance and heat flux.
ISSN:0031-9007
1079-7114
DOI:10.1103/physrevlett.105.125501