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Quantum effects

Heat flow in atomic bottlenecks

The Wiedemann–Franz law linking electrical and thermal conductance has now been verified experimentally in atomic junctions.

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Figure 1: Comparing single quanta of heat and electrical conductance requires the creation of junctions of a few atoms wide between two metals, as well as the detection of vanishingly small amounts of heat flow.

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Correspondence to Oleg Kolosov.

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Kolosov, O. Heat flow in atomic bottlenecks. Nature Nanotech 12, 402–403 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1038/nnano.2016.306

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