Eric Tervo and Michael Gustafson’s paper titled “Photonic thermal conduction by infrared plasmonic resonators in semiconductor nanowires” has been published in Applied Physics Letters. They model the thermal excitation and waveguiding of photons inside in dopant-engineered semiconductor nanowires, showing that photons promise to carry as much heat as phonons and electrons. Their results identify a new mode of heat transport inside solids, suggest experiments to definitively demonstrate this effect, and open the door to solid-state thermal switches.
