Friday, April 3, 2015

thermodynamics - Is it possible to focus the radiation from a black body to make something hotter than that black body?


My previous question wasn't specific enough. I'll try to be more specific.


Let's imagine we have a hot body let's say 6000K hot that emits lots of thermal radiation. Let's assume 1kW of radiative power falls on on a m². Now if we use a lens with 1m² area, we can focus this 1kW into a smaller area which heats up until it radiates back the incoming power.


Now by using a lens with a smaller focal length, the image of the hot body can be smaller. So we can concentrate the radiation into a smaller area. The smaller the area you concentrate the power, the hotter that area becomes isn't it?


But I read in lot of places that this hot spot cannot be hotter than the body that that provides the energy, so in our example it cannot be hotter than 6000K, because it would violate the laws of thermodynamics. So what happens if you keep decreasing the focal length and size of the image? Maybe you cannot shrink the hot spot smaller than some size due to the wave interference and diffraction, thus ensuring this constraint?




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