The Third Way of Thermal-Electric Conversion beyond Seebeck and Pyroelectric Effects

Thermal-electric conversion is crucial for smart energy control and harvesting, such as thermal sensing and waste heat recovering. So far, people are aware of only two ways of direct thermal-electric conversion, Seebeck and pyroelectric effects, each with distinct working conditions and limitations. Here, we report the third way of thermal-electric conversion beyond Seebeck and pyroelectric effects. In contrast to Seebeck effect that requires spatial temperature difference, the-third-way converts the time-dependent ambient temperature fluctuation into electricity, similar to the behavior of pyroelectricity. However, the-third-way is also distinct from pyroelectric effect in the sense that it does not require polar materials but applies to general conducting systems. We demonstrate that the-third-way results from the temperature-fluctuation-induced dynamical charge redistribution. It is a consequence of the fundamental nonequilibrium thermodynamics and has a deep connection to the topological phase in quantum mechanics. The findings expand our knowledge and provide new means of thermal-electric energy harvesting.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

On the square-free number sequence

The main purpose of this paper is to study the number of the square-free number sequence, and give two interesting asymptotic formulas for it. At last, give another asymptotic formula and a corollary

Current Dissipation in Thin Superconducting Wires: Accurate Numerical Evaluation Using the String Method

Current dissipation in thin superconducting wires is numerically evaluated by using the string method, within the framework of time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau equation with a Langevin noise term. The most probable transition pathway between two neighboring current-carrying metastable states, continuously linking the Langer-Ambegaokar saddle-point state to a state in which the order parameter vanishes somewhere, is found numerically. We also give a numerically accurate algorithm to evaluate the prefactors for the rate of current-reducing transitions.Comment: 25 pages, 5 figure