Efficient weakly-radiative wireless energy transfer: An EIT-like approach

• Main Authors: Hamam, Rafif E. (Contributor), Karalis, Aristeidis (Contributor), Soljacic, Marin (Contributor), Joannopoulos, John (Author)
• Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Center for Materials Science and Engineering (Contributor), Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Institute for Soldier Nanotechnologies (Contributor), Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics (Contributor), Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Research Laboratory of Electronics (Contributor), Joannopoulos, John D. (Contributor)
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Inc., 2009-12-11T20:05:20Z.
• Subjects: Article
• Online Access: Get fulltext

Inspired by a quantum interference phenomenon known in the atomic physics community as electromagnetically induced transparency (EIT), we propose an efficient weakly radiative wireless energy transfer scheme between two identical classical resonant objects, strongly coupled to an intermediate classical resonant object of substantially different properties, but with the same resonance frequency. The transfer mechanism essentially makes use of the adiabatic evolution of an instantaneous (so called "dark") eigenstate of the coupled 3-object system. Our analysis is based on temporal coupled mode theory (CMT), and is general enough to be valid for various possible sorts of coupling, including the resonant inductive coupling on which witricity-type wireless energy transfer is based. We show that in certain parameter regimes of interest, this scheme can be more efficient, and/or less radiative than other, more conventional approaches. A concrete example of wireless energy transfer between capacitively-loaded metallic loops is illustrated at the beginning, as a motivation for the more general case. We also explore the performance of the currently proposed EIT-like scheme, in terms of improving efficiency and reducing radiation, as the relevant parameters of the system are varied.
U.S. Department of Energy
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Army Research Office
National Science Foundation