A Generalized Landauer Formalism of Nanoscale Thermal Radiative Transfer

Though the dependence of near-field radiative transfer on the gap between two planar objects is well understood and that between curved objects is becoming clearer, a general theory of micro and nanoscale radiative transfer is still unavailable. Here, I describe a general framework based on Rytov’s theory of fluctuational electrodynamics that can be used to analyze radiative transfer between any two structures, independent of their length scale.