Thermal near-field radiative transfer between two spheres

By A. Narayanaswamy, Gang Chen. 2008

177 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Radiative energy transfer between closely spaced bodies is known to be significantly larger than that predicted by classical radiative transfer because of tunneling due to evanescent waves. Theoretical analysis of near-field radiative transfer is mainly restricted to radiative transfer between two half-spaces or spheres treated in the dipole approximation (very small sphere) or proximity force approximation (radius of sphere much greater than the gap). Sphere-sphere or sphere-plane configurations beyond the dipole approximation or proximity force approximation have not been attempted. In this work, the radiative energy transfer between two adjacent non-overlapping spheres of arbitrary diameters and gaps is analyzed numerically. For spheres of small diameter (compared to the wavelength), the results coincide with the dipole approximation. We see that the proximity force approximation is not valid for spheres with diameters much larger than the gap, even though this approximation is well established for calculating forces. From the numerical results, a regime map is constructed based on two nondimensional length scales for the validity of different approximations.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Civil and Structural Engineering, Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/107211a4d9eadfbba3a6376fac917babc2346498

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In Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics

In Civil and Structural Engineering

In Statistical and Nonlinear Physics

Citations in the corpus

Solution of near-field thermal radiation in one-dimensional layered media using dyadic Green's functions and the scattering matrix method (2009, background): “Since then, numerical predictions of near-field radiative heat transfer between parallel surfaces with bulk emitters [19,20] and film emitter [21–23], between a dipole and a surface [24], between two dipoles [25–27], in a cylindrical cavity [28], between two large spheres [29], and between a dipole ”
Review of near‐field thermal radiation and its application to energy conversion (2009, unknown): “Narayanaswamy A, Chen G. Thermal emission control with one-dimensional metallodielectric photonic crystals.”
Near-Field Thermal Radiation: Recent Progress and Outlook (2015, methodology): “C. Luo, A. Narayanaswamy, G. Chen, and J.D. Joannopoulos, Thermal Radiation from Photonic Crystals: A Direct Calculation, Physical Review Letters, Vol. 93, p. 213905, 2004.”