Title: Near-field heat transfer close to the physical contact and in many-body systems
When: Thursday, April 24, 2025, 12:00
Place: Department of Theoretical Condensed Matter Physics, Faculty of Sciences, Module 5, Seminar Room (5th Floor)
Speaker: Philippe Ben-Abdallah / Laboratoire Charles Fabry, Institut d’Optique (CNRS), Paris
Thermal radiation is one of the three fundamental mechanisms of heat transfer in nature and has played a pivotal role in shaping blackbody theory and the emergence of quantum physics. In recent years, significant progress in understanding radiative heat transfer—especially at extremely short distances between objects and between several interacting objects—has uncovered a range of intriguing phenomena. In this seminar, I will present an overview of this evolving field, highlighting two central themes. First, I will examine how radiative heat exchange between two solid bodies changes as they near physical contact, navigating the transition zone between radiative and conductive heat transfer. I will show that while photons dominate energy exchange at large separations, acoustic phonons (i.e., mechanical vibrations) take over at interatomic distances. In the second part, I will delve into the unique behaviors that arise in systems with multiple interacting bodies. These setups provide a platform to study thermal counterparts of condensed matter effects, such as the thermal Hall effect and the inverse spin Hall effect. This area of research opens up exciting new directions in spin caloritronics, fueled by the interaction between the spin angular momentum of light and thermal transport.
