Dresden 2011 – scientific programme

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DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik

DY 21: Thermodynamics and Statistical Physics of Small Systems (contributed talks)

DY 21.5: Talk

Wednesday, March 16, 2011, 12:45–13:00, HÜL 186

Kramers barrier crossing as a cooling machine — •Philip Schiff and Abraham Nitzan — School of Chemistry, Tel Aviv University, Israel

The achievement of local cooling is a prominent goal in the design of functional transport nanojunctions. One generic mechanism for local cooling is driving a system through a local uphill potential step. In this talk we examine the manifestation of this mechanism in the context of the Kramers barrier crossing problem. For a particle crossing a barrier, the local effective temperature and the local energy exchange with the thermal environment are calculated, and the coefficient of performance of the ensuing cooling process are evaluated. These results represent a heuristic demonstration of a mechanism for pumping heat in a nanosystem.