Propulsion force and heat transfer for nonreciprocal nanoparticles

TL;DR

This paper investigates heat transfer and Casimir forces involving nonreciprocal nanoparticles, revealing unique contributions from reciprocal and nonreciprocal parts, and demonstrating that propulsion forces can be significantly larger than gravity, with implications for heat engine efficiency.

Contribution

It provides a detailed analysis of nonreciprocal nanoparticle interactions, distinguishing reciprocal and nonreciprocal contributions, and explores the magnitude and bounds of propulsion forces.

Findings

Self emission contains reciprocal and nonreciprocal terms.

Persistent heat transfer requires nonreciprocal and anisotropic particles.

Propulsion forces can exceed gravitational forces significantly.

Abstract

We analyze heat transfer and Casimir forces involving a nonreciprocal nanoparticle. By dissecting the resulting expressions into reciprocal and nonreciprocal contributions, we find that the particle's self emission contains $++$ and $--$ terms, i.e., the particle's reciprocal ($+$) and nonreciprocal ($-$) parts couple to the respective parts of its surrounding. In contrast, the heat transfer to the nanoparticle from the surrounding contains $-+$ and $+-$ contributions, which we find to persist at equal temperatures. For two nanoparticles, such persistent transfer is found to require one particle to be nonreciprocal and the other to be anisotropic. The propulsion force for the nanoparticle, for which our results agree with previous work, is dominated by $\pm\mp$ terms, making it distinct from forces found for reciprocal particles. The amplitude of the propulsion force can be orders of magnitude larger than gravitational forces. Despite being distinct, we find the $\pm\mp$ terms to be bound by $\pm\pm$ terms, a consequence of passivity of the objects. For the force, this bound limits the efficiency in a heat engine setup, as observed for parallel plates before.