A radiative thermostat system senses its own temperature and automatically modulates heat transfer by turning on/off the cooling to maintain its temperature near a desired set point. Taking advantage of far- and near-field radiative thermal technologies, we propose an intelligent radiative thermostat induced by the combination of passive radiative cooling and near-field radiative thermal diode for thermal regulation at room temperature. The top passive radiative cooler in thermostat system with static thermal emissivity uses the cold outer space to passively cool itself all day, which can provide the bottom structure with the sub-ambient cold source. Meanwhile, using the phase-transition material vanadium dioxide, the bottom structure forms a near-field radiative thermal diode with the top cooler, which can significantly regulate the heat transfer between two terminals of the diode and then realize a stable temperature of the bottom structure. Besides, the backsided heat input of the thermostat has been taken into account according to real-world applications. Thermal performance of the proposed radiative thermostat design has been analyzed, showing that the coupling effect of static passive radiative cooling and dynamic internal heat transfer modulation can maintain an equilibrium temperature approximately locked within the phase transition region. Besides, after considering empirical indoor-to-outdoor heat flux, rendering its thermal performance closer to that of passive solar residential building walls, the calculation result proves that the radiative thermostat system can effectively modulate the temperature and stabilize it within a controllable range. Passive radiative thermostats driven by near-field radiative thermal diode can potentially enable intelligent temperature regulation technologies, for example, to moderate diurnal temperature in regions with extreme thermal swings.

We will discuss recent results: (i) on the theory of the Casimir torque between two gratings rotated by an angle theta with respect to each other, and (ii) on the theory and experiment on the Casimir force between interpenetrating gratings. These findings pave the way to the design of contactless quantum vacuum torsional spring and sensors with possible relevance to micro and nanomechanical devices.

In the first part of my talk I discuss the prediction and physical consequences of a new geometric zero-th order critical transition occurring to the Casimir torque at Theta=0 rotation angle between diffraction gratings. In the second part I discuss the theory predictions and proposal for the realization of a genuinely quantum thermal machine to be realized in systems out of thermal equilibrium. Here the recorded video: "https://online.kitp.ucsb.edu/online/flectro22/antezza/".

This is a broad-audience public lecture names "KITP Blackboard Lunch" I gave at the Kavli Institute of Theoreical Physics (KITP) at the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB) to discuss the physical basis of the core subjects of the KITP 7-week program "Emerging Regimes and Implications of Quantum and Thermal Fluctuational Electrodynamics" I organized at KITP. This lecture was devoted to the KITP permanent staff and to all the participants to the several KITP programs. Here the recorded video: "https://online.kitp.ucsb.edu/online/bblunch/antezza"

After a rapid introduction to the basic physical concepts of radiative heat transfer, I will focus on the study of the radiative heat transfer between two identical metallic one-dimensional lamellar gratings. To this aim I will present and exploit a modification to the widely used Fourier modal method, known as adaptive spatial resolution, based on a stretch of the coordinate associated with the periodicity of the grating. I show that this technique dramatically improves the rate of convergence when calculating the heat flux, and that there is a remarkable amplification of the exchanged energy, ascribed to the appearance of spoof-plasmon modes. By comparing our results to recent studies, we find a consistent quantitative disagreement with some previously obtained results going up to 50%.

Excitation of hybrid modes constituted by different material-supported polaritons is a common way to enhance the near-field radiative energy transport, which has fascinating promise in applications of thermal photonics. Here, we investigate near–field thermal radiation mechanisms in heterostructure composed of hBN film and black phosphorus single layer. The results show that this heterostructured system can give rise to a remarkable enhancement for photon tunneling, outperforming the near-field thermal radiation properties of its building blocks, as well as some other representative heterostructures. Moreover, we find that the anisotropic hybrid effect can induce a remarkable topological reconstitution of polaritons for hBN film and black phosphorus, forming a novel anisotropic hybrid polaritons. Notably, such hybrid modes show significant topological differences compared to hBN film and black phosphorus in the type-I Reststrahlen band due to the anisotropic anticrossing hybridization effect. Lastly, we systematically analyze the evolution of such hybrid polariton modes as a function of hBN film thickness and the corresponding influence on radiative properties of the heterostructure. This work may benefit the applications of near-field energy harvesting and radiative cooling based on hybrid polaritons in anisotropic two-dimensional material and hyperbolic film.

Light-assisted micronanoscale temperature control in a complex nanoparticle network has attracted a lot of research interest. Many efforts have been put into the optical properties of nanoparticle networks, and only a few investigations have reported its light-induced thermal behavior. We consider a two-dimensional (2D) square-lattice nanoparticle ensemble made of typical metal Ag with a radius of 5 nm. The effect of complex multiple scattering and thermal accumulation on light-induced thermal behavior in plasmonic resonance frequency (around 383 nm) is analyzed through the Green's function approach. The regime borders of both multiple scattering and thermal accumulation effects on the photothermal behavior of the 2D square-lattice nanoparticle ensemble are figured out clearly and quantitatively. The dimensionless parameter φ is defined as the ratio of a full temperature increase to that without considering the multiple scattering or thermal accumulation to quantify the multiple scattering and thermal accumulation effects on photothermal behavior. The more compact the nanoparticle ensemble is, the stronger the multiple scattering effect on thermal behavior is. When the lattice spacing increases to dozens times of the radius, the multiple scattering becomes insignificant. When φ≈1 (lattice spacing increases to hundreds times of the radius), the thermal accumulation effects are weak and can be neglected safely. The polarization-dependent distribution of the temperature increase of nanoparticles is observed only in the compact nanoparticle ensemble, while for a dilute ensemble, such a polarization-dependent temperature increase distribution can no longer be observed. This work may help with the understanding of the light-induced thermal transport in the 2D particle ensemble.