106 research outputs found
Temperature control of thermal radiation from heterogeneous bodies
We demonstrate that recent advances in nanoscale thermal transport and
temperature manipulation can be brought to bear on the problem of tailoring
thermal radiation from compact emitters. We show that wavelength-scale
composite bodies involving complicated arrangements of phase-change
chalcogenide (GST) glasses and metals or semiconductors can exhibit large
emissivities and partial directivities at mid-infrared wavelengths, a
consequence of temperature localization within the GST. We consider multiple
object topologies, including spherical, cylindrical, and mushroom-like
composites, and show that partial directivity follows from a complicated
interplay between particle shape, material dispersion, and temperature
localization. Our calculations exploit a recently developed fluctuating-volume
current formulation of electromagnetic fluctuations that rigorously captures
radiation phenomena in structures with both temperature and dielectric
inhomogeneities.Comment: 17 pages, 7 figuer
On the Computation of Power in Volume Integral Equation Formulations
We present simple and stable formulas for computing power (including
absorbed/radiated, scattered and extinction power) in current-based volume
integral equation formulations. The proposed formulas are given in terms of
vector-matrix-vector products of quantities found solely in the associated
linear system. In addition to their efficiency, the derived expressions can
guarantee the positivity of the computed power. We also discuss the application
of Poynting's theorem for the case of sources immersed in dissipative
materials. The formulas are validated against results obtained both with
analytical and numerical methods for scattering and radiation benchmark cases
Fluctuating volume-current formulation of electromagnetic fluctuations in inhomogeneous media: incandecence and luminescence in arbitrary geometries
We describe a fluctuating volume--current formulation of electromagnetic
fluctuations that extends our recent work on heat exchange and Casimir
interactions between arbitrarily shaped homogeneous bodies [Phys. Rev. B. 88,
054305] to situations involving incandescence and luminescence problems,
including thermal radiation, heat transfer, Casimir forces, spontaneous
emission, fluorescence, and Raman scattering, in inhomogeneous media. Unlike
previous scattering formulations based on field and/or surface unknowns, our
work exploits powerful techniques from the volume--integral equation (VIE)
method, in which electromagnetic scattering is described in terms of
volumetric, current unknowns throughout the bodies. The resulting trace
formulas (boxed equations) involve products of well-studied VIE matrices and
describe power and momentum transfer between objects with spatially varying
material properties and fluctuation characteristics. We demonstrate that thanks
to the low-rank properties of the associatedmatrices, these formulas are
susceptible to fast-trace computations based on iterative methods, making
practical calculations tractable. We apply our techniques to study thermal
radiation, heat transfer, and fluorescence in complicated geometries, checking
our method against established techniques best suited for homogeneous bodies as
well as applying it to obtain predictions of radiation from complex bodies with
spatially varying permittivities and/or temperature profiles
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