Generation of heat pulses in mesoscopic conductors using light fields

TL;DR

This paper introduces a method to generate and control heat pulses in mesoscopic conductors using light-induced temperature modulations, enabling new possibilities in quantum caloritronics and heat transport studies.

Contribution

It presents a novel approach to produce charge-neutral heat pulses via light-modulated temperature changes in electronic reservoirs, distinct from electron-based excitations.

Findings

Light fields can induce controllable, time-dependent temperature modulations in electrodes.

Generated heat pulses are charge-neutral and can be detected in mesoscopic conductors.

The approach enables probing of time-resolved heat transport and quantum coherence.

Abstract

We propose to generate heat pulses in mesoscopic conductors using light fields. In contrast to single-electron excitations such as levitons, which are created by accurate voltage drives, our approach relies on modulating the temperature of an electronic reservoir. To this end, we show that the interactions with a light field can induce a controllable time-dependent temperature in an electrode. The temperature modulations generate charge-neutral heat pulses that can be emitted into a mesoscopic conductor and detected in the outputs. We illustrate our approach by evaluating the time-dependent currents and their fluctuations using a tight-binding model of two electronic reservoirs connected by a quantum point contact. Our work establishes a route towards on-demand caloritronics, where energy rather than charge carries quantum information, and it paves the way for probing time-resolved heat transport and quantum coherence in thermally driven conductors.