Frequency-Selective Near-Field Radiative Heat Transfer between Photonic Crystal Slabs: A Computational Approach for Arbitrary Geometries and Materials

Alejandro W. Rodriguez, Ognjen Ilic, Peter Bermel, Ivan Celanovic, John D. Joannopoulos, Marin Soljačić, and Steven G. Johnson

Phys. Rev. Lett. 107, 114302 – Published 7 September 2011

Abstract

We demonstrate the possibility of achieving enhanced frequency-selective near-field radiative heat transfer between patterned (photonic-crystal) slabs at designable frequencies and separations, exploiting a general numerical approach for computing heat transfer in arbitrary geometries and materials based on the finite-difference time-domain method. Our simulations reveal a tradeoff between selectivity and near-field enhancement as the slab-slab separation decreases, with the patterned heat transfer eventually reducing to the unpatterned result multiplied by a fill factor (described by a standard proximity approximation). We also find that heat transfer can be further enhanced at selective frequencies when the slabs are brought into a glide-symmetric configuration, a consequence of the degeneracies associated with the nonsymmorphic symmetry group.

Received 28 April 2011

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.107.114302

Authors & Affiliations

Alejandro W. Rodriguez^1,2, Ognjen Ilic³, Peter Bermel³, Ivan Celanovic³, John D. Joannopoulos³, Marin Soljačić³, and Steven G. Johnson²

¹School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA
²Department of Mathematics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA
³Department of Physics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02139, USA