
Phonon heat transfer across a vacuum through quantum fluctuations - bookofjoe
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-019-1800-4
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lscharen
This brings to mind this dormant company that I ran across _decades_ ago that
proposed a cooling solution based on electron tunneling. The company and it's
corporate structure never felt very legitimate, and the whole thing was very
hand-wavy...

[http://www.coolchips.gi/technology/overview.shtml](http://www.coolchips.gi/technology/overview.shtml)

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at_a_remove
That was the exact thing I was thinking about. They are in the category of
"too good to be true" technologies that I check on once every year or two when
I remember them, like EESTOR.

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willis936
So there isn’t a phonon field?

The concept of phonons is confusing because unlike other particles, phonons
don’t have an accompanying fundamental field. They seem more like an emergent
phenomenon. Why should phonons be considered particles?

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ISL
Phonons are the minimum quantum excitation of vibration within a material.
Just as harmonic oscillators have quantum energy levels, so do materials. You
are correct -- they are an emergent phenomenon.

In the case of phonons, they can carry momentum, they travel like particles. A
sibling comment is correct -- they are technically quasi-particles [1]. It is
okay to think about a phonon field within a material. That field is not
fundamental, in the sense that an electron is presently-believed to be
fundamental, but that doesn't keep it from being a _very_ useful way to think
about condensed-matter physics.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasiparticle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasiparticle)

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bookofjoe
Excellent "civilian" explanation:
[https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/space-heater-
scie...](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/space-heater-scientists-
find-new-way-to-transfer-energy-through-a-vacuum/)

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coldcode
There is a link on the page to rent or buy article. How do you rent an
article?

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xattt
You actively work to forget what you read in the article after the rental
period is over.

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tempguy9999
Maxwell's demon, again?

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est31
If confirmed this would be pretty cool. Information transferred through vacuum
without bosons but fluctuation only.

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mrfusion
Could this be used for cooling spacecraft someday?

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plus
I think not. The heat flux decays exponentially with increasing distance
between the objects. This is an extremely short range phenomenon, like
electron tunneling.

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caleb-allen
My wish of a quantum heater will remain unfulfilled!

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chopin
Every heater is a quantum heater.

