Radiative spin caloritronics in nonreciprocal many-body systems

arXiv:2607.22845 · cond-mat.mes-hall, physics.optics · Submitted 2026-07-24 · Read on arXiv

cond-mat.mes-hall, physics.optics

Submitted: 2026-07-24

Updated: 2026-10-21

License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

The gist: We predict the spin thermal Hall effect in nonreciprocal magneto-optical many-body systems, in which a longitudinal radiative heat current generates a transverse accumulation of the spin angular

Abstract

We predict the spin thermal Hall effect in nonreciprocal magneto-optical many-body systems, in which a longitudinal radiative heat current generates a transverse accumulation of the spin angular momentum carried by thermal photons. We show that this effect and the inverse spin thermal Hall effect constitute an Onsager-Casimir reciprocal pair, thereby establishing heat and photon spin as coupled transport channels in nonreciprocal photonic systems. The second law of thermodynamics imposes fundamental bounds on the spin-heat coupling, leading to a thermal-spin figure of merit that quantifies the efficiency of radiative spin-heat conversion. Our results establish a complete thermodynamic framework for photon spin caloritronics and lay the conceptual foundations for spin-controlled thermal radiation and nonreciprocal photonic thermal devices.

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