Breakdown of detailed balance for thermal radiation by synthetic fields

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how synthetic electric and magnetic fields can break detailed balance in heat transfer spectra, revealing non-reciprocal effects in graphene and Casimir interactions, with implications for experimental verification.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach using synthetic fields to induce non-reciprocity in heat transfer, expanding understanding beyond magnetic field effects.

Findings

Synthetic fields cause non-reciprocal heat transfer spectra.

Breakdown of detailed balance observed in graphene and Casimir systems.

Proposed experimental setup for verifying non-reciprocal heat transfer.

Abstract

In recent times the possibility of non-reciprocity in heat transfer between two bodies has been extensively studied. In particular the role of strong magnetic fields has been investigated. A much simpler approach with considerable flexibility would be to consider heat transfer in synthetic electric and magnetic fields which are easily applied. We demonstrate the breakdown of detailed balance for the heat transfer function $\mathcal{T} ({\omega})$, i.e. the spectrum of heat transfer between two objects due to the presence of synthetic electric and magnetic fields. The spectral measurements carry lot more physical information and were the reason for the quantum theory of radiation. We demonstrate explicitly the synthetic field induced non-reciprocity in the heat transfer transmission function between two graphene flakes and for the Casimir coupling between two objects. Unlike many other cases of heat transfer, the latter case has interesting features of the strong coupling. Further the presence of synthetic fields affects the mean occupation numbers of two membranes and propose this system for the experimental verification of the breakdown of detailed balance.