Giant Quantum Freezing of Tunnel Junctions mediated by Environments

TL;DR

This paper explores how a nanojunction exchanges heat with its environment, revealing a giant heat flow due to a two-temperature emission-absorption mechanism, with implications for quantum freezing and heating effects.

Contribution

It provides analytical and numerical analysis of quantum heat exchange in nanojunctions, highlighting a giant heat flow mediated by environment interactions.

Findings

Giant heat flow observed between junction and environment.

Analytical results derived for high impedance environments.

Numerical simulations show significant freezing and heating effects.

Abstract

We investigate the quantum heat exchange between a nanojunction and a many-body or electromagnetic environment far from equilibrium. It is shown that the two-temperature energy emission-absorption mechanism gives rise to a giant heat flow between the junction and the environment. We obtain analytical results for the heat flow in an idealized high impedance environment and perform numerical calculations for the general case of interacting electrons and discuss the giant freezing and heating effects in the junction under typical experimental conditions.