Thermal dynamics and electronic temperature waves in layered correlated materials

Understanding the mechanism of heat transfer in nanoscale devices remains one of the greatest intellectual challenges in the field of thermal dynamics, by far the most relevant from an applicative standpoint. When the thermal dynamics is confined to the nanoscale, the characteristic timescales become ultrafast, engendering the failure of the common description of energy propagation and the emergence of unconventional phenomena such as wave-like temperature propagation. In this talk, I will explore layered strongly correlated materials as a platform to identify and control unconventional electronic heat transfer phenomena on the sub-pico-seconds time scale. I will show how strongly interacting systems can be tailored to sustain a wide spectrum of electronic heat transport regimes, ranging from ballistic, to hydrodynamic all the way to diffusive. Within the hydrodynamic regime, wave-like temperature oscillations are predicted up to room temperature. The interaction strength can be exploited as a knob to control the dynamics of temperature waves as well as the onset of different thermal transport regimes.