Thermal rectification in a qubit-resonator system

Abstract

A qubit-oscillator junction connecting as a series two bosonic heat baths at different temperatures can display heat valve and diode effects. In particular, the rectification can change in magnitude and even in sign, implying an inversion of the preferential direction for the heat current with respect to the temperature bias. We perform a systematic study of these effects in a circuit QED model of qubit-oscillator system and find that the features of current and rectification crucially depend on the qubit-oscillator coupling. While at small coupling, transport occurs via a resonant mechanism between the subsystems, in the ultrastrong coupling regime the junction is a unique, highly hybridized system and current becomes largely insensitive to the detuning. Correspondingly, the rectification undergoes a change of sign. In the nonlinear transport regime, the coupling strength determines whether the current scales sub- or superlinearly with the temperature bias and whether the rectification, which increases in magnitude with the bias, is positive or negative. We also find that steady-state coherence largely suppresses the current and enhances rectification. An insight on these behaviors with respect to changes in the system parameters is provided by analytical approximate formulas.