Radiative heat flux through a topological Su-Schrieffer-Heeger chain of plasmonic nanoparticles

TL;DR

This paper studies how topological edge modes in a chain of plasmonic nanoparticles influence radiative heat transfer, revealing dominant edge mode contributions and universal scaling laws across different modes.

Contribution

It demonstrates that topological edge modes significantly dominate heat transfer in a nanoparticle chain and establishes their universal scaling behavior.

Findings

Edge modes dominate heat transfer in the topological phase

Long-range coupling enables edge mode influence despite localization

Both band and edge modes follow the same scaling law

Abstract

We investigate the radiative heat transport along a Su-Schrieffer-Heeger chain of InSb nanoparticles. We show that in the topological non-trivial phase, the edge modes dominate the radiative heat transport despite their strong localization at the edges of the finite chain due to a long-range coupling of the first and last particle. We further discuss the scaling laws of the heat transfer with respect to the chain length for the longitudinal and transversal band- and edge modes and conclude that both type of modes obey the same scaling law.