Ballistic Thermal Rectification in Asymmetric Three-Terminal Mesoscopic Dielectric Systems

Abstract

By coupling the asymmetric three-terminal mesoscopic dielectric system with a temperature probe, at low temperature, the ballistic heat flux flow through the other two asymmetric terminals in the nonlinear response regime is studied based on the Landauer formulation of transport theory. The thermal rectification is attained at the quantum regime. It is a purely quantum effect and is determined by the dependence of the ratio $\tau_{RC}(\omega)/\tau_{RL}(\omega)$ on $\omega$, the phonon's frequency. Where $\tau_{RC}(\omega)$ and $\tau_{RL}(\omega)$ are respectively the transmission coefficients from two asymmetric terminals to the temperature probe, which are determined by the inelastic scattering of ballistic phonons in the temperature probe. Our results are confirmed by extensive numerical simulations.