Long-distance heat transfer between molecular systems through a hybrid plasmonic-photonic nanoresonator

TL;DR

This paper presents a hybrid plasmonic-photonic cavity system enabling controllable long-distance heat transfer between molecules via optomechanical interactions, combining plasmonic and dielectric properties for efficient energy transport.

Contribution

It introduces a novel hybrid resonator design that combines plasmonic and photonic modes to facilitate and control long-range heat transfer between molecular systems.

Findings

Hybrid modes enable long-distance heat transfer.

Heat transfer can be actively controlled with a laser.

The structure combines high coupling and large mode volume.

Abstract

We introduce a hybrid plasmonic-photonic cavity setup that can be used to induce and control long-distance heat transfer between molecular systems through optomechanical interactions. The structure consists of two separated plasmonic nanoantennas coupled to a dielectric cavity. The hybrid modes of this resonator can combine the large optomechanical coupling of the sub-wavelength plasmonic modes with the large quality factor and delocalized character of the cavity mode that extends over a large distance ($\sim\mu$m). We show that this can lead to effective long-range heat transport between molecular vibrations that can be actively controlled through an external driving laser.