Matter, Energy, and Heat Transfer in a Classical Ballistic Atom Pump

TL;DR

This paper investigates the classical behavior of a ballistic atom pump, focusing on how it affects energy, temperature, and particle transport between reservoirs, revealing unexpected variations with incident particle energy.

Contribution

It provides a classical analysis of energy and temperature changes in a ballistic atom pump, bridging the understanding between classical chaotic transport and quantum behavior.

Findings

Energy and temperature changes vary unexpectedly with incident particle energy.

The pump can induce net particle transport between reservoirs.

Classical analysis reveals complex dependencies not previously characterized.

Abstract

A ballistic atom pump is a system containing two reservoirs of neutral atoms or molecules and a junction connecting them containing a localized time-varying potential. Atoms move through the pump as independent particles. Under certain conditions, these pumps can create net transport of atoms from one reservoir to the other. While such systems are sometimes called "quantum pumps," they are also models of classical chaotic transport, and their quantum behavior cannot be understood without study of the corresponding classical behavior. Here we examine classically such a pump's effect on energy and temperature in the reservoirs, in addition to net particle transport. We show that the changes in particle number, of energy in each reservoir, and of temperature in each reservoir vary in unexpected ways as the incident particle energy is varied.