A Single Gyrotropic Particle as a Heat Engine

Abstract: We demonstrate that the system composed of a gyrotropic particle out of thermal equilibrium with vacuum can be regarded as a heat engine. Such a particle, initially at rest, will experience a fluctuation-induced torque and start to rotate, producing mechanical work out from the temperature difference of the particle and its environment. We rigorously prove that the efficiency of the heat engine is tightly bound by the Carnot efficiency. We also predict that, such an engine can be constructed using a heavily-doped semiconductor nanoparticle under magnetic field, and moreover the particle can reach at a steady-state rotating frequency in the order of terahertz solely due to thermal fluctuations.