Propulsion force and heat transfer for nonreciprocal nanoparticles

Abstract

We analyze heat transfer and Casimir forces involving a nonreciprocal nanoparticle. By dissecting the resulting expressions into reciprocal and nonreciprocal contributions, we find that the particle's self emission contains $++$ and $--$ terms, i.e., the particle's reciprocal ($+$) and nonreciprocal ($-$) parts couple to the respective parts of its surrounding. In contrast, the heat transfer to the nanoparticle from the surrounding contains $-+$ and $+-$ contributions, which we find to persist at equal temperatures. For two nanoparticles, such persistent transfer is found to require one particle to be nonreciprocal and the other to be anisotropic. The propulsion force for the nanoparticle, for which our results agree with previous work, is dominated by $\pm\mp$ terms, making it distinct from forces found for reciprocal particles. The amplitude of the propulsion force can be orders of magnitude larger than gravitational forces. Despite being distinct, we find the $\pm\mp$ terms to be bound by $\pm\pm$ terms, a consequence of passivity of the objects. For the force, this bound limits the efficiency in a heat engine setup, as observed for parallel plates before.