Magnetically Induced Thermal Rectification

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that magnetic fields can induce significant thermal rectification in chaotic billiard chains, enabling asymmetric heat transport that can be arbitrarily enhanced under certain conditions.

Contribution

It introduces a novel mechanism for thermal rectification using magnetic fields in chaotic billiard systems, expanding understanding of heat control in non-equilibrium physics.

Findings

Heat current becomes asymmetric with temperature exchange.

Thermal rectification factor can be arbitrarily large.

Rectification is achieved with magnetic field gradients or strong fields.

Abstract

We consider far from equilibrium heat transport in chaotic billiard chains with non-interacting charged particles in the presence of non-uniform transverse magnetic field. If half of the chain is placed in a strong magnetic field, or if the strength of the magnetic field has a large gradient along the chain, heat current is shown to be asymmetric with respect to exchange of the temperatures of the heat baths. Thermal rectification factor can be arbitrarily large for sufficiently small temperature of one of the baths.