Heat engine driven by photon tunneling in many-body systems

TL;DR

This paper investigates three-body near-field heat engines driven by photon tunneling, demonstrating they can outperform two-body systems in power output and thermodynamic efficiency for energy harvesting.

Contribution

It introduces a theoretical analysis of three-body heat engines, showing their potential to surpass two-body systems in power and thermodynamic availability.

Findings

Three-body systems have higher power output than two-body systems.

Thermodynamic limits for three-body systems are more favorable.

Photon tunneling enhances energy conversion efficiency.

Abstract

Near-field heat engines are devices that convert the evanescent thermal field supported by a primary source into usable mechanical energy. By analyzing the thermodynamic performance of three-body near-field heat engines, we demonstrate that the power they supply can be substantially larger than that of two-body systems, showing their strong potential for energy harvesting. Theoretical limits for energy and entropy fluxes in three-body systems are discussed and compared with their corresponding two-body counterparts. Such considerations confirm that the thermodynamic availability in energy-conversion processes driven by three-body photon tunneling can exceed the thermodynamic availability in two-body systems.