Magnetically Tunable Near-Field Radiative Heat Transfer in Hyperbolic Metamaterials

Active control of radiative heat transfer still remains open due to its exciting application potential. In view of this, we present a theoretical demonstration of dynamically tunable near-field radiative heat transfer (NFRHT) between two multilayer hyperbolic metamaterials (consisting of alternating layers of a magneto-optical (MO) material and a dielectric) using an external magnetic field. We show that magnetization-induced hyperbolic modes play a significant role in radiative heat transfer and allow a highly tunable heat flux. Moreover, the hybridization of intrinsic and magnetization-induced hyperbolic modes significantly enhances the radiative heat transfer. In particular, we find that polarization conversion due to nonzero off-diagonal elements enables the spectral heat transfer coefficient for the TE polarization to be as large as that for the TM polarization, which is vastly different from the case of two closely spaced bulk MO plates. In addition, to quantitatively characterize the thermal modulation, we show a negative thermal magnetoresistance effect in this system, which approaches -59.6% when the magnetic field intensity reaches 10 T. Our findings may be beneficial for active noncontact thermal management at the nanoscale, and facilitate a deeper understanding of the mechanisms of MO hyperbolic metamaterials in terms of NFRHT.