Near-field radiative heat transfer in N-body systems

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Until the 2000s only near-field heat exchanges between two objects had been theoretically and experimentally investigated and the mechanisms for energy transport in systems composed of a collection of different objects in mutual interaction was still unexplored and even out of range of the fluctuational electrodynamic theory introduced by Polder and van Hove in the beginning of 70s describing two-body heat exchanges. In 2011, we have introduced the first theoretical framework to deal with near-field heat exchanges in many-body systems in the approximation of small objects. This result consists in a generalization of the coupled dipole theory initially introduced in optics for fluctuating dipoles. In particular, a Meir-Wingreen-Landauer-type formula for the radiative heat transport in interacting N-body systems has been derived. A generalization of this theory to macroscopic objects has revealed the existence of purely many-body effects such as thermal photon tunneling enhancement which allows us to extend the near-field effects to larger separation distances using a passive relay system intercalated between two bodies in near-field interaction. All these pioneer works have opened the way to study the physics of heat exchanges in more or less complex plasmonic networks in regimes where near-field interactions are dominating the energy transport. But, to date this physics remains largely unexplored.