–
February 2, 2024
Speaker: Baptiste Coquinot (ENS Paris)
Hosted by: Mikhail Lemeshko
An electronic current driven through a conductor can induce a current in another conductor through the famous Coulomb drag effect. Similar phenomena have been reported at the interface between a moving fluid and a conductor, but their interpretation has remained elusive. I will present our recent theoretical work, which predicts that a globally neutral liquid can generate an electronic current in the solid wall along which it flows [1], building on the idea of solid-liquid quantum friction [2]. This hydrodynamic Coulomb drag originates from both the Coulomb interactions between the liquids charge fluctuations and the solids charge carriers, and the liquid-electron interaction mediated by the solids phonons, consistently with experimental observations [3]. Our results provide a roadmap for controlling nanoscale liquid flows at the quantum level. In particular, we predict a fluidic equivalent of electron tunnelling, termed flow tunnelling: a flowing liquid may transfer momentum to another liquid through a solid wall. We directly observe this phenomenon in semi-classical molecular dynamics simulations, paving the way to a wealth of nanofluidic applications inspired by condensed matter physics.