Transverse thermophotovoltaics
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- Speaker: Gaoming Tang (Graduate School of Chinese Academy of Engineering Physics, China)
- Event: Quantum Technology Workshop 2026
Transverse thermophotovoltaics has been conceptually proposed as a paradigm distinct from conventional junction-based photovoltaics. The talk will introduce a microscopic formalism of this effect in which a transverse electric current emerges in a two dimensional metal sheet via nonreciprocal surface plasmon polaritons driven by near-field thermal radiation. This theoretical formalism incorporates the electron-photon interaction by integrating electronic transition factor governed by energy-momentum conservation, the photon flux factor encoding the nonreciprocal surface modes, and their directional coupling. Transverse thermophotovoltaics opens new avenues for active nanoscale thermal energy conversion. Furthermore, I will extend this framework to the photonic spin Seebeck effect in a similar setup, demonstrating how Rashba spin-orbit coupling in an electron-doped transition metal dichalcogenide monolayer converts circularly polarized thermal photons into electronic spin to induce a spin current.