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Far-field heat transfer and monochromatic thermal currents in a cylindrical nonreciprocal cavity

Guillem Masdemont, Julien Legendre*, and Georgia T. Papadakis†

  • *Contact author: julien.legendre@icfo.eu
  • †Contact author: georgia.papadakis@icfo.eu
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Phys. Rev. Research 8, 023293 – Published 15 June, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/5bbx-qx7v

Abstract

Breaking Kirchhoff's law of thermal radiation yields opportunities in one-way radiative thermal transport and circuitry. We investigate its consequences in the far-field regime in cylindrical cavities, by employing a specular ray-tracing algorithm. At thermal equilibrium, we show that violation of Kirchhoff's law yields nonvanishing heat rectification coefficients within different sections of the cavity, which can be tuned for perfect rectification and circulation, while internal monochromatic currents vanish due to the intrinsic coupling between emission and absorption at specular surfaces. This constraint is lifted under nonequilibrium conditions, where rotational heat fluxes within the cavity can be precisely controlled by appropriately combining reciprocal and nonreciprocal materials. These findings open avenues for thermal management and provide design principles for nonreciprocal photonic devices.

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Information

Phys. Rev. Research 8, 023293– Published 15 June, 2026
  • Received 19 February 2026
  • Accepted 3 May 2026
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

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