A ground-breaking study conducted by researchers from the National University of Singapore (NUS) has revealed a method of using quantum mechanical wave theories to “lock” heat into a fixed position.
Ordinarily, a source of heat diffuses through a conductive material until it dissipates, but Associate Professor Cheng-Wei Qiu from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the NUS Faculty of Engineering and his team used the principle of anti-parity-time (APT) symmetry to show that it is possible to confine the heat to a small region of a metal ring without it spreading over time.
In the future, this newly demonstrated phenomenon could be used to control heat diffusion in sophisticated ways and optimize efficacy in systems that need cooling. The results of the study were published on 12 April 2019 in the journal Science.
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