Observation of Electronic Viscous Dissipation in Graphene Magneto-thermal Transport

TL;DR

This paper reports the first observation of viscous electronic heating in graphene, revealing how hydrodynamic electron flow affects thermal transport and dissipation, with implications for electronic device thermal management.

Contribution

It introduces experimental evidence of viscous heating in graphene's electron fluid, demonstrating two key signatures of hydrodynamics through thermal conductivity suppression and temperature redistribution.

Findings

Thermal conductivity is suppressed below the Wiedemann-Franz value.

Viscous heating causes magnetically-induced temperature redistribution.

First direct observation of viscous electronic heating in an electron fluid.

Abstract

Hydrodynamic transport effectively describes the collective dynamics of fluids with well-defined thermodynamic quantities. With enhanced electron-electron interactions at elevated temperatures, the collective behavior of electrons in graphene with minimal impurities can be depicted as a hydrodynamic flow of charges. In this new regime, the well-known rules of Ohmic transport based on a single electron picture no longer apply, necessitating the consideration of collective electron dynamics. In particular, the hydrodynamic analogues of Joule heating and thermal transport require consideration of the viscous motion of the electron fluid, which has a direct impact on energy dissipation and heat generation by the fluidic motion of charge. In this work, we probe graphene hydrodynamics with thermal transport and find two distinct, qualitative signatures: thermal conductivity suppression below the Wiedemann-Franz value and viscous heating leading to magnetically-induced redistribution of temperature. We find these two effects are coincident in temperature and density, providing robust qualitative signatures of hydrodynamics, despite arising from two distinct aspects of this new regime: microscopic momentum conservation due to electron-electron scattering, and geometry-dependent viscous dissipation. Our results mark the first observation of viscous electronic heating in an electron fluid, providing insight for thermal management in electronic hydrodynamic devices and offering a new methodology for identifying hydrodynamic states in other systems.