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Updated: Aug 8, 2026

Utilization of Plasmonic and Photonic Crystal Nanostructures for Enhanced Micro- and Nanoparticle Manipulation
Published on: September 27, 2011
Photon-mediated thermal relaxation of electrons in nanostructures
D R Schmidt1, R J Schoelkopf, A N Cleland
1Department of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, California 93106, USA.
Abstract:
Measurements of the thermal properties of nanoscale electron systems have ignored the effect of electrical noise radiated between the electron gas and the environment, through the electrical leads. Here we calculate the effect of this photon-mediated process, and show that the low-temperature thermal conductance is equal to the quantum of thermal conductance, GQ = pi2kB2T/3h, times a coupling coefficient. We find that, at very low temperatures, the photon conductance is the dominant route for thermal equilibration, while at moderate temperatures this relaxation mode adds one quantum of thermal conductance to that due to phonon transport.
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