arXiv subjects

Weiliang Jin

Publications and source records attributed to Weiliang Jin.

26 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2017

Overcoming limits to near-field radiative heat transfer in uniform planar media through multilayer optimization

Radiative heat transfer between uniform plates is bounded by the narrow range and limited contribution of surface waves. Using a combination of analytical calculations and numerical gradient-based optimization, we show that such a limitation can be overcome in complicated multilayer geometries, allowing the scattering and coupling rates of slab resonances to be altered over a broad range of evanescent wavevectors. We conclude that while the radiative flux between two inhomogeneous slabs can only be weakly enhanced, the flux between a dipolar particle and an inhomogeneous slab---proportional to the local density of states---can be orders of magnitude larger, albeit at the expense of increased frequency selectivity. A brief discussion of hyperbolic metamaterials shows that they provide far less enhancement than optimized inhomogeneous slabs.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2016

Exact formulas for radiative heat transfer between planar bodies under arbitrary temperature profiles: modified asymptotics and sign-flip transitions

We derive exact analytical formulas for the radiative heat transfer between parallel slabs separated by vacuum and subject to arbitrary temperature profiles. We show that, depending on the derivatives of the temperature at points close to the slab--vacuum interfaces, the flux can exhibit one of several different asymptotic low-distance ($d$) behaviors, obeying either $1/d^2$, $1/d$, or logarithmic power laws, or approaching a constant. Tailoring the temperature profile within the slabs could enable unprecedented tunability over heat exchange, leading for instance to sign-flip transitions (where the flux reverses sign) at tunable distances. Our results are relevant to the theoretical description of on-going experiments exploring near-field heat transfer at nanometric distances, where the coupling between radiative and conductive heat transfer could be at the origin of temperature gradients.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2016

General formulation of coupled radiative and conductive heat transfer between compact bodies

We present a general framework for studying strongly coupled radiative and conductive heat transfer between arbitrarily shaped bodies separated by sub-wavelength distances. Our formulation is based on a macroscopic approach that couples our recent fluctuating volume--current (FVC) method of near-field heat transfer to the more well known Fourier conduction transport equation. We apply our technique to consider heat exchange between aluminum-zinc oxide nanorods and show that the presence of bulk plasmon resonances can result in extremely large radiative heat transfer rates (roughly twenty times larger than observed in planar geometries), whose interplay with conductive transport leads to nonlinear temperature profiles along the nanorods.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2016

Strongly coupled near-field radiative and conductive heat transfer between planar objects

We study the interplay of conductive and radiative heat transfer (RHT) in planar geometries and predict that temperature gradients induced by radiation can play a significant role on the behavior of RHT with respect to gap sizes, depending largely on geometric and material parameters and not so crucially on operating temperatures. Our findings exploit rigorous calculations based on a closed-form expression for the heat flux between two plates separated by vacuum gaps $d$ and subject to arbitrary temperature profiles, along with an approximate but accurate analytical treatment of coupled conduction--radiation in this geometry. We find that these effects can be prominent in typical materials (e.g. silica and sapphire) at separations of tens of nanometers, and can play an even larger role in metal oxides, which exhibit moderate conductivities and enhanced radiative properties. Broadly speaking, these predictions suggest that the impact of RHT on thermal conduction, and vice versa, could manifest itself as a limit on the possible magnitude of RHT at the nanoscale, which asymptotes to a constant (the conductive transfer rate when the gap is closed) instead of diverging at short separations.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2016

Giant frequency-selective near-field energy transfer in active--passive structures

We apply a fluctuation electrodynamics framework in combination with semianalytical (dipolar) approximations to study amplified spontaneous energy transfer (ASET) between active and passive bodies. We consider near-field energy transfer between semi-infinite planar media and spherical structures (dimers and lattices) subject to gain, and show that the combination of loss compensation and near-field enhancement (achieved by the proximity, enhanced interactions, and tuning of subwavelength resonances) in these structures can result in orders of magnitude ASET enhancements below the lasing threshold. We examine various possible geometric configurations, including realistic materials, and describe optimal conditions for enhancing ASET, showing that the latter depends sensitively on both geometry and gain, enabling efficient and tunable gain-assisted energy extraction from structured surfaces.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2015

Amplified and directional spontaneous emission from arbitrary composite bodies: self-consistent treatment of Purcell effect below threshold

We study amplified spontaneous emission (ASE) from wavelength-scale composite bodies--complicated arrangements of active and passive media--demonstrating highly directional and tunable radiation patterns, depending strongly on pump conditions, materials, and object shapes. For instance, we show that under large enough gain, $\mathcal{PT}$ symmetric dielectric spheres radiate mostly along either active or passive regions, depending on the gain distribution. Our predictions are based on a recently proposed fluctuating volume--current (FVC) formulation of electromagnetic radiation that can handle inhomogeneities in the dielectric and fluctuation statistics of active media, e.g. arising from the presence of non-uniform pump or material properties, which we exploit to demonstrate an approach to modelling ASE in regimes where Purcell effect (PE) has a significant impact on the gain, leading to spatial dispersion and/or changes in power requirements. The nonlinear feedback of PE on the active medium, captured by the Maxwell--Bloch equations but often ignored in linear formulations of ASE, is introduced into our linear framework by a self-consistent renormalization of the (dressed) gain parameters, requiring the solution of a large system of nonlinear equations involving many linear scattering calculations.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2015

Temperature control of thermal radiation from heterogeneous bodies

We demonstrate that recent advances in nanoscale thermal transport and temperature manipulation can be brought to bear on the problem of tailoring thermal radiation from compact emitters. We show that wavelength-scale composite bodies involving complicated arrangements of phase-change chalcogenide (GST) glasses and metals or semiconductors can exhibit large emissivities and partial directivities at mid-infrared wavelengths, a consequence of temperature localization within the GST. We consider multiple object topologies, including spherical, cylindrical, and mushroom-like composites, and show that partial directivity follows from a complicated interplay between particle shape, material dispersion, and temperature localization. Our calculations exploit a recently developed fluctuating-volume current formulation of electromagnetic fluctuations that rigorously captures radiation phenomena in structures with both temperature and dielectric inhomogeneities.

cond-mat.mes-hall↗

arXiv2015

Fluctuating volume-current formulation of electromagnetic fluctuations in inhomogeneous media: incandecence and luminescence in arbitrary geometries

We describe a fluctuating volume--current formulation of electromagnetic fluctuations that extends our recent work on heat exchange and Casimir interactions between arbitrarily shaped homogeneous bodies [Phys. Rev. B. 88, 054305] to situations involving incandescence and luminescence problems, including thermal radiation, heat transfer, Casimir forces, spontaneous emission, fluorescence, and Raman scattering, in inhomogeneous media. Unlike previous scattering formulations based on field and/or surface unknowns, our work exploits powerful techniques from the volume--integral equation (VIE) method, in which electromagnetic scattering is described in terms of volumetric, current unknowns throughout the bodies. The resulting trace formulas (boxed equations) involve products of well-studied VIE matrices and describe power and momentum transfer between objects with spatially varying material properties and fluctuation characteristics. We demonstrate that thanks to the low-rank properties of the associatedmatrices, these formulas are susceptible to fast-trace computations based on iterative methods, making practical calculations tractable. We apply our techniques to study thermal radiation, heat transfer, and fluorescence in complicated geometries, checking our method against established techniques best suited for homogeneous bodies as well as applying it to obtain predictions of radiation from complex bodies with spatially varying permittivities and/or temperature profiles.

cond-mat.mtrl-sci↗