Thermal conductance quantum

In physics, the thermal conductance quantum $g_{0}$ describes the rate at which heat is transported through a single ballistic phonon channel of temperature $T$ . It is given by:

$g_{0}={\frac {\pi ^{2}{k_{B}}^{2}T}{3h}}\approx (9.456\times 10^{-13}W/K^{2})T$ .

The thermal conductance of any electrically insulating structure that exhibits ballistic phonon transport is a positive integer multiple of $g_{0}$ . The thermal conductance quantum was first measured in 2000.^[1] These measurements employed suspended silicon nitride nanostructures that exhibited a constant thermal conductance of 16 $g_{0}$ at temperatures below approximately 0.6 kelvin.

For ballistic electrical conductors, the electron contribution to the thermal conductance is also quantized as a result of the electrical conductance quantum and the Wiedemann–Franz law, which has been quantitatively measured at both cryogenic (~20 mK) ^[2] and room temperature (~300K)^[3] ^[4].

References

↑ Schwab, K.; E. A. Henriksen; J. M. Worlock; M. L. Roukes (2000). "Measurement of the quantum of thermal conductance". Nature. 404 (6781): 974–7. Bibcode:2000Natur.404..974S. doi:10.1038/35010065. PMID 10801121.
↑ Jezouin, S.; et al. (2013). "Quantum Limit of Heat Flow Across a Single Electronic Channel". Science. 342: 601. arXiv:1502.07856. Bibcode:2013Sci...342..601J. doi:10.1126/science.1241912. PMID 24091707.
↑ Cui, L.; et al. (2017). "Quantized thermal transport in single-atom junctions". Science. 355: 1192. Bibcode:2017Sci...355.1192C. doi:10.1126/science.aam6622. PMID 28209640.
↑ Mosso, N.; et al. (2017). "Heat transport through atomic contacts". Nature Nanotechnology. 12 (5): 430-433. arXiv:1612.04699. doi:10.1038/nnano.2016.302.

Thermal conductance quantum

References

See also