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Breakdown of the Planck blackbody radiation law at nanoscale gaps

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Abstract

The Planck theory of blackbody radiation imposes a limit on the maximum radiative transfer between two objects at given temperatures. When the two objects are close enough, near-field effects due to tunneling of evanescent waves lead to enhancement of radiative transfer above the Planck limit. When the objects can support electromagnetic surface polaritons, the enhancement can be a few orders-of-magnitude larger than the blackbody limit. In this paper, we summarize our recent measurements of radiative transfer between two parallel silica surfaces and between a silica microsphere and a flat silica surface that show unambiguous evidence of enhancement of radiative transfer due to near-field effects above the Planck limit.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Columbia University, New York, NY, 10027, USA

    Arvind Narayanaswamy

  2. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA

    Sheng Shen, Xiaoyuan Chen & Gang Chen

  3. ExxonMobil Upstream Research Company, Houston, TX, 77098, USA

    Lu Hu

Authors
  1. Arvind Narayanaswamy
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  2. Sheng Shen
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  3. Lu Hu
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  4. Xiaoyuan Chen
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  5. Gang Chen
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Correspondence to Arvind Narayanaswamy.

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Narayanaswamy, A., Shen, S., Hu, L. et al. Breakdown of the Planck blackbody radiation law at nanoscale gaps. Appl. Phys. A 96, 357–362 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00339-009-5203-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00339-009-5203-5

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