Mesoscopic Description of Radiative Heat Transfer at the Nanoscale

Abstract

We present a formulation of the nanoscale radiative heat transfer using concepts of mesoscopic physics. We introduce the analog of the Sharvin conductance using the quantum of thermal conductance. The formalism provides a convenient framework to analyze the physics of radiative heat transfer at the nanoscale. Finally, we propose a radiative heat transfer experiment in the regime of quantized conductance.