Kramers barrier crossing as a cooling machine

TL;DR

This paper investigates how driving a particle over a potential barrier can be used as a cooling mechanism in nanojunctions, analyzing local temperature and energy exchange to evaluate efficiency.

Contribution

It introduces a novel perspective on Kramers barrier crossing as a cooling process, quantifying local temperature and energy exchange in this context.

Findings

Local effective temperature can be reduced during barrier crossing.

The coefficient of performance for the cooling process is evaluated.

The mechanism provides insights into nanoscale thermal management.

Abstract

The achievement of local cooling is a prominent goal in the design of functional transport nanojunctions. One generic mechanism for local cooling is driving a system through a local uphill potential step. In this paper we examine the manifestation of this mechanism in the context of the Kramers barrier crossing problem. For a particle crossing a barrier, the local effective temperature and the local energy exchange with the thermal environment are calculated, and the coefficient of performance of the ensuing cooling process is evaluated.