Faraday's law for a moving circuit is . The magnetic flux is through a surface bounded by the instantaneous loop, with consistent orientation. For the stationary external field here, the motion supplies the motional electromotive force.
Let be downward penetration of the bottom segment, , and . While , flux grows at rate . Define positive current as the direction whose magnetic force is upward. With negligible self-inductance, and
The resistive magnetic entry of a falling loop gives
The initial acceleration is and the speed approaches if the loop remains partly immersed long enough. Joule heating removes gravitational energy. At the first , both horizontal segments are inside the uniform field: the net flux becomes constant, the net magnetic force vanishes, and this zero-inductance model has thereafter. The subsequent speed increases with acceleration .
For negligible electrical resistance, conservation of total linked flux instead gives in the braking-current convention. Therefore
and the lossless limit of magnetic loop braking yields
Here energy is stored reversibly in , not dissipated. If , the loop reverses before complete entry and executes the ideal oscillatory motion while straddling the boundary. If , it reaches complete entry on its first descent; thereafter the current is constant, the forces on its two horizontal segments cancel, and it falls with acceleration . The exact grazing case needs care at the ideal discontinuous field boundary. An entry-only sinusoid must not be extrapolated through full immersion.
Figure 1.
Resistive relaxation and reversible inductive motion during loop entry
. Original dimensionless entry solutions. Curves assume that the loop is long enough for the indicated stage; a fully immersed loop has different subsequent dynamics. Details.
The varying magnetic flux through the ring induces an electromotive force by Faraday's law of induction. Its direction follows Lenz's law. With solenoid current , ring current , ring self-inductance , electrical resistance , and mutual inductance ,
The ring sits in a nonuniform magnetic field: coupling decreases above the solenoid, so and with a common orientation for the two windings. For , the in-phase part of the induced ring current is negative:
Thus alternating-current induction levitation can balance the ring's weight when . A falling mean lifting force with height supplies vertical stability. In the strongly inductive limit the two currents are almost opposite: the ring repels the solenoid during both half cycles. Finite self-inductance matters; an ideal purely resistive loop would carry a current exactly in quadrature with and give zero average force in this model. The source supplies the Joule heating in the real ring, and any mechanical work while it rises.
The characteristic impedance of a lossless transmission line is the ratio of the voltage to the current amplitude of a single forward-travelling wave. If and denote inductance and capacitance per unit length, the lossless telegrapher equations give
A backward wave has when current is positive along . Thus characteristic impedance is not a resistor's electrical resistance: it describes travelling-wave amplitudes and determines impedance matching, power transfer and reflections. A semi-infinite line, or a line terminated by a matching load, presents that impedance at its input.
At a junction with no lumped branch, voltage and electric current are continuous:
Eliminating gives the voltage reflection coefficient
For real positive , incident and reflected waves occupy the same line, so their power ratio is .
For the slightly mismatched coaxial cables, the change in characteristic impedance is
Consequently
The requested power limit implies . Since for the stated line, the adjacent cables' outer radii must match within approximately . If a tolerance is quoted separately as a symmetric manufacturing range and arbitrary worst-case pairs can differ by , the corresponding individual tolerance is approximately . The leading calculation is for small mismatches; the exact logarithmic expression gives slightly asymmetric positive and negative limits. The vacuum wave impedance used here is approximately .[ref]
A needle is a shunt electrical resistance , so the load seen at its location is the continuation of the line in parallel with : . The local voltage reflection coefficient and transmission amplitude are
For periodic resistive loading of a transmission line, the reflection from the next needle travels an additional round trip and crosses each previous needle twice. Taking the first needle as phase reference, the single-return approximation for periodic line reflections therefore sums to
Here is the propagation phase velocity in the cable, for the stated nondispersive nonmagnetic filling. Squaring the amplitude gives the requested expression
For a finite number of needles the amplitude has the additional numerator . The displayed semi-infinite result assumes sufficiently many needles, no terminal reflection, and neglects intrinsic propagation loss.
For real , write . The denominator of the power coefficient is . It has constructive peaks at and minima at , repeating with frequency spacing . Within this approximation,
Weak individual shunts thus give narrow interference peaks, with phase width of order .
The requested sum excludes paths that reflect repeatedly between different needles. It should not be read as an exact multiple-scattering result, particularly at the coherent peaks. For example the exact semi-infinite amplitude satisfies
At this equation reduces to : the exact ideal infinite array has unit power reflection there, rather than the first-return approximation's value near . This does not change the requested geometric-series derivation, but identifies its physical limitation.
Mutual inductance expresses how a changing electric current in one circuit induces an electromotive force in another. Choose winding orientations and define their linked magnetic fluxes by
For a reciprocal linear magnetic system, the same appears in both expressions. Faraday's law of induction gives when the secondary electric current does not itself change. The sign depends on winding orientation and is consistent with Lenz's law.
The stored magnetic energy is
Its nonnegativity for arbitrary electric currents requires . Strong coupling makes approach ; flux leakage makes it smaller.
An ideal electrical transformer has two windings linked by the same time-varying core magnetic flux. The induced winding voltages are proportional to their turn counts. For appropriately chosen terminal polarities,
The electric current convention in the power relation takes primary power into the device and secondary power out to the load. Consequently a load electrical impedance appears at the primary as . A larger secondary voltage therefore comes with a smaller available secondary electric current, rather than extra energy.
A steady direct electric current produces no sustained transformer action after its switching transient. Practical departures from the ideal include winding electrical resistance, leakage magnetic flux, finite magnetizing electric current, core saturation, eddy currents and magnetic hysteresis losses.
Induction and its sign. The Maxwell-Faraday equation is . For a fixed loop, Stokes theorem gives
This is Faraday's law of induction. The orientation of the surface normal and positive circulation are linked by the right-hand rule. The minus sign is Lenz's law: the induced current's linked flux opposes the imposed flux change, rather than reinforcing it.
The inductive current. Let the loop normal make angle with the applied field, with positive current defined by that normal. The external magnetic flux is . With negligible electrical resistance, the circuit equation is , so total linked flux is constant. For zero initial trapped flux,
The printed result needs this initial-flux assumption; in general an additional constant current is allowed. The units are amperes because a weber divided by a henry is an ampere.
Current and forces at one instant. Take along and , so relative to the chosen normal. The loop magnetic dipole moment therefore has a component opposite the applied field. Each wire element experiences Lorentz force . Opposite sides have equal and opposite forces, giving zero net force in the uniform field but a nonzero couple.
Figure 1.
Original top view of the loop's vertical sides at positive applied field; dots and crosses show vertical current, and the force pair increases the angle between normal and field
. Details.
The horizontal top and bottom wire segments also experience equal and opposite vertical forces. They cancel without adding torque about the vertical rotation axis; the displayed force pair supplies that torque.
Average torque. Since , its generalized component for increasing is . Substitution gives
and, using ,
The orientation torque on a flux-conserving loop drives its normal away from the field for the stated initial angle. Its magnitude has units joules, or newton metres.
Free motion with large inertia. Write for the mechanical moment of inertia. If its orientation changes little during each field cycle, the slow equation is , with effective potential
The stable orientation is , where the loop plane contains the applied field. Released from rest between and , the loop accelerates toward that orientation, overshoots and librates around it. In the leading averaged, undamped model its turning angles are and . It does not settle without a dissipative mechanism. For small librations the squared angular frequency is .
Negligible inductance and finite resistance. Now the current is proportional to the induced electromotive force, not to the flux. Including slow rotation,
The rotational damping of a resistive loop in an oscillating field follows from
At fixed orientation, the first term alternates at and has zero mean. The loop can therefore rock slightly, but there is no leading mean aligning torque like that in the inductive case. Slow rotation gives
which opposes motion and produces Joule heating. Initial-phase transients can initiate motion, and the instantaneous torque is not zero. This description retains the large-inertia, slow-motion approximation; it does not assert an exact stationary solution at every starting angle.
The Ohmic heating per unit volume is , uniform in this wire. Multiplying by its volume gives the dissipated power
where the electrical resistance is . The result is in watts; over a time interval the dissipated energy is .
Put . The initial conditions give
The printed electric current arrow points toward the positively labelled capacitor plate, so its signed electric current is , not the positive discharge magnitude. Hence
For the stated electrical resistance,
The voltage starts at with zero slope; the signed electric current starts at zero and initially becomes negative. Its initial slope is . Both oscillate with an envelope and a amplitude time constant. The phase difference is close to a quarter period, with the small damping correction displayed explicitly in .
Figure 1.
Signed capacitor voltage and printed-arrow current, with the exchange and dissipation of circuit energy over three periods
. Details.
Choose a positive unit normal to the loop and choose positive circulation by the right-hand rule. Write the applied magnetic field as , where . Because the field is uniform, the external magnetic flux is
Faraday's law of induction gives the induced electromotive force, and Ohm's law gives the current through the loop's electrical resistance:
This is the induced current in a tilted resistive loop with the self-generated magnetic-flux contribution neglected as requested. The factor has units . A field parallel to the loop plane has and induces no current in this uniform-field model.
For , the initial normal flux is positive. At , the external magnetic field is instantaneously zero but its normal component is decreasing, so and . The current is counterclockwise when viewed from the positive-normal side. Its own magnetic field points along through the loop, preserving the initial normal flux in accordance with Lenz's law.
Figure 1.
Initial oblique field and the induced current a quarter-cycle later, for a positive initial normal flux
. Details.
For , both circulation and the induced normal-field direction reverse. The current follows the rate of change of magnetic flux; the quarter-cycle current is nonzero even though the external field itself vanishes then.
The original diagram has a series circuit containing and , in parallel with ; it is not three separate parallel components. The electrical admittance is therefore
For , voltage and current are in phase when the imaginary part of vanishes. Excluding the zero-frequency solution, division by gives
A nonzero lossy parallel coil resonance exists only if . With , and ,
For zero electrical resistance, the ideal parallel inductor-capacitor cancellation occurs at
The fractional reduction relative to the zero-resistance coil is
At exactly and , , so finite applied voltage draws zero net current in the ideal model. The quoted frequency is the limiting parallel-resonance value; the phase of an exactly zero current is undefined.
For a long solenoid, solenoid inductance obeys , where is the number of turns, the cross-sectional area and the axial winding length. The natural reading of half as many turns occupying half the axial length gives
With unchanged wire material and gauge, halving the wire length also halves its electrical resistance: . With the total capacitance fixed, the new angular frequency satisfies
Thus
Neglecting the small resistive correction gives the estimate .
There is a documented alternative interpretation: if half the turns are distributed over the original axial length, then while , giving
This corresponds to treating “length of the winding” as wire length while preserving axial geometry. The examiner's report explicitly accepted either inductance scaling, provided the resistance change was included. The first interpretation follows the statement that the axial winding length is halved; the second records the accepted ambiguity rather than silently choosing a different geometry.[ref]
A modulation-doped GaAs-AlGaAs electron gas is confined on the GaAs side of the interface. The larger-gap AlGaAs supplies a conduction-band barrier; charge transfer from remote donors and the resulting electric field bend the bands into an approximately triangular well. transverse electronic mode wavefunctions are confined normal to the interface but free in its plane. electrons settle into the well until their electrochemical potential agrees with the donor/contact environment. An undoped spacer separates mobile electrons from ionized donors, reducing impurity scattering. Equilibrium has one Fermi level across the structure; the conduction-band edge is not flat. Surface depletion and the cap also affect the profile. The original drawing illustrates one occupied confinement transverse electronic mode; a single spatial electron gas need not in general imply only one occupied vertical transverse electronic mode.
molecular beam epitaxy can grow a clean GaAs buffer/channel, an undoped AlGaAs spacer, a Si-doped AlGaAs supply region and a protective GaAs cap on a suitable substrate. Control composition, interface quality and background impurities during growth; placing dopants directly in the channel defeats the principal mobility advantage. Define a mesa or isolation region, fabricate low-resistance ohmic contacts to the buried gas, and pattern fine metal split gates by electron beam lithography and the lift-off process. Negative gate bias depletes the underlying gas, leaving a narrow channel between the gates. Check contact resistance, leakage, carrier density and mobility; operation with ballistic electron transport requires channel length shorter than the relevant scattering lengths and smooth confinement on the wavelength scale. The lithographic gap does not equal the electrical width because of lateral depletion.
Figure 1.
Original qualitative conduction-band profile, epitaxial layer order and electrostatic split-gate channel
. Details.
For a long uniform channel supporting ballistic electron transport, transverse confinement creates thresholds with continuous longitudinal propagation above each threshold. One directed spin branch of a transverse electronic mode has states per length and group velocity . Hence : velocity cancels the one-dimensional density of states. Including two unresolved spin states,
For low temperature and small bias, a fully open transverse electronic mode has , giving
The assumptions are ideal reservoirs/contacts, negligible reflection and interactions that would invalidate the independent-subband description, and unresolved spin splitting. A resolved spin branch contributes . The finite two-terminal electrical resistance is a contact/mode-injection effect, despite the absence of dissipative scattering inside the ideal channel.
For voltage partition in a ballistic constriction, a short saddle has strong local electric-field and electrostatic screening variation near its entrances and barrier, rather than the uniform Ohmic voltage gradient of a diffusive wire. Right-moving incident states inherit the source distribution and left-moving states the drain distribution; there is no unique local equilibrium chemical potential inside an ideal ballistic saddle. The electrostatic potential must be determined self-consistently. In a symmetric rigid-barrier approximation, the barrier follows the mean lead potential and half the electrochemical bias lies on each side. This is a stated approximation, not a universal spatial voltage profile.
For a saddle , transverse electronic mode thresholds are . The smooth-barrier transmission is , approaching a step for a sharp threshold on the bias/thermal scale.[ref]
Let and assume no additional bias dependence of . At zero temperature,
When the source and drain sample and thresholds, the differential electrical conductance is . These half plateaus arise from the two ends of the bias window, not fractional carriers. The dc ratio need not share their plateau values. Heating, spin splitting and interaction-induced features must be distinguished experimentally.
In bias spectroscopy of one-dimensional subbands, plot differential electrical conductance or its gate derivative against gate bias and source-drain bias. Threshold branches occur where or . When one bias-window edge meets and the other ,
Thus the intersections of adjacent threshold branches calibrate the one-dimensional spacing directly in energy. A gate lever arm can then convert gate intervals to energy; it should be measured rather than guessed. Asymmetric bias partition, a moving barrier or a gate-dependent spacing modifies slopes and plateau weights, requiring the corresponding self-consistent bias model.
Figure 2.
Original rigid-saddle bias spectroscopy and differential half plateaus
. Details.
As changes, each quantized orbit area grows linearly with field while the Fermi surface cross-section stays approximately fixed. Landau energies repeatedly cross the Fermi energy, making the density of states there oscillate. If the relevant extremal orbit has area , its crossings satisfy
Thus the oscillations are periodic in inverse field rather than field. In three dimensions integration over longitudinal momentum makes extremal cross-sections dominate.
One observable is the de Haas-van Alphen effect: the field-dependent occupation changes the electronic free energy, so its field derivative, the magnetization, oscillates. The corresponding oscillations of longitudinal electrical resistance are the Shubnikov-de Haas effect. Both probe Fermi-surface geometry.
For one conduction electron per atom, let be the atom density. State counting in a Bloch band gives the Fermi wavevector . The Debye model preserves the three vibrational modes per atom by a spherical Debye wavevector cutoff , so
Both wavevectors are of order the inverse atomic spacing. The numerical factor uses the spherical Debye approximation; a real zone boundary and the largest-frequency mode depend on direction and branch. Because , short-wavelength acoustic phonons can scatter Fermi surface electrons through substantial angles. For nearly elastic scattering within a spherical Fermi surface,
Near room temperature, when a substantial fraction of the phonon spectrum is occupied, electron-phonon scattering is often the main source of electrical resistance. For , the phonon population and scattering rate are approximately proportional to , giving , and roughly constant when the Wiedemann-Franz law holds.
For small-angle electron-phonon transport at low temperature, thermally active acoustic modes instead have
They predominantly scatter forward. The factor makes such collisions inefficient at relaxing an electrical current, while a phonon energy of order can still substantially change an electron's thermal excitation. Heat-current relaxation therefore need not share the charge-current relaxation time. In the clean three-dimensional acoustic-phonon model this gives but , so the phonon-limited electrical resistivity scales as and . These laws describe the regime before residual elastic scattering takes over; at sufficiently low temperature impurities give nearly constant residual resistivity and , restoring the usual Lorenz number.[ref]
Phonons also transport heat themselves, with . At low temperature their population decreases and their phonon mean free path can become boundary- or defect-limited. At higher temperature Umklapp scattering can relax the phonon heat current. Such lattice conduction is an additional contribution, not the quantity constrained by the electronic Wiedemann-Franz law.
Ordinary doped semiconductor devices need a regime where their donor impurities or acceptor impurities supply mobile charge carriers while intrinsic thermal excitation remains sufficiently small.
At low temperature, donor impurities or acceptor impurities may no longer be ionized. Dopant freeze-out reduces the carrier density, raises electrical resistance and changes the intended carrier injection and p-n junction response. At high temperature the intrinsic carrier concentration grows as
when band effective masses and band gap are treated as constant. Once it becomes comparable with the net doping density, it overwhelms the intended electron-hole imbalance; reverse leakage and dissipation increase and useful p/n control is lost.
The usual operating window lies between freeze-out and intrinsic conduction, with mobility and thermal management placing further practical limits. This is a statement about conventional doped-device operation, not a fundamental prohibition on engineered cryogenic or wide-bandgap devices.
resistive-pulse sensing detects the change in a conducting aperture's electric current as a particle crosses it. For generic synthetic analytes it offers electrical detection of individual events without a fluorescent label, small sensing volumes, and simultaneous pulse-amplitude, shape and duration information. Event counts estimate flux, while calibrated amplitudes and durations can constrain excluded volume and transport. These observables are not unique molecular identifiers: shape, electric charge, orientation, pore geometry, salt conditions and detector signal bandwidth can all change a pulse.
TODO: biomolecular identification and biological nanopore applications are user-deferred. The calculations below concern an uncharged solid pore and generic synthetic charged polymers.
The original cross-section has radius at both ends and radius midway through. In the intended one-dimensional series-resistance approximation, put and
For constant ionic electrical resistivity , a slice contributes . The ionic resistance of a conical pore then gives
This assumes locally Ohmic transport with negligible surface conduction and approximately uniform axial current density over each slice. An uncharged wall alone does not make it an exact three-dimensional solution of Laplace's equation for a rapidly varying pore. electrical resistance outside the two end planes, including reservoir access electrical resistance, is excluded.
Take as the potential drop inside the pore, so positive electric current flows along . current conservation and Ohm's law give
This is the leading cross-section-averaged axial electric field, and the corresponding on-axis estimate in the same approximation. It is largest at the two narrow ends and smallest at the wide centre:
The graph is symmetric, falls on the first half and rises on the second, with a minimum at . The electric potential difference check is . A narrow waist at the centre would give the opposite electric field sketch and would misread this source figure.
Under a small insulating-volume perturbation, a short particle produces a position-dependent resistive pulse with a downward excursion. If its excluded volume is and small compared with the local sensing volume, a local volume-exclusion model gives . Thus is strongest near either narrow end. A sufficiently resolved event can show two deeper end features separated by a shallower middle depression, then return to baseline. Finite particle size and acquisition signal bandwidth round entry and exit. The original illustration below shows this conditional small-particle mechanism, not a fitted amplitude. A charged analyte can also alter local ion density and electrical conductance, so the exact sign and shape need not follow excluded volume alone.
For positive drift in this coordinate, require . The electrophoretic transit time in a conical pore is the integral of inverse local drift speed:
Therefore
Reverse the polarity or use when reporting a positive transit duration in the opposite direction. The limit is regular: , equal to length divided by uniform drift speed. Also , so nonuniform electric field makes this point-particle transit no faster than the uniform-field value at the same length and electric potential difference. The wide, weak-field interior dominates residence time.
The final length-dependent observations do not uniquely identify a microscopic mechanism. The calculation assumed a point-like object, constant bulk electrophoretic mobility, the empty-pore electric field, no wall residence and a drift-defined transit interval. An extended chain can sample entrance and reservoir fields simultaneously, alter its conformation and tension, and change the effective driving-to-friction ratio. These effects can make a bulk-mobility, local-field prediction underestimate the driving. For a small object, wall interactions, reversible trapping, or repeated entry excursions can add residence time that the deterministic formula omits. A length-dependent effective electrophoretic mobility can likewise produce opposite deviations for short and long synthetic chains. Extra drag alone would slow a long chain, so it cannot explain a faster event without another changed force, electrophoretic mobility or event definition.
Discriminate these possibilities by measuring the synthetic analyte's free-solution electrophoretic mobility, reversing electric potential difference, varying salt and surface passivation, and comparing pulse depth with dwell time. Resolved multiple occupancy or folds can alter amplitude as well as timing. Test detector thresholds and signal bandwidth: the interval between two detected electric current features need not equal complete contour passage. A drift–diffusion description additionally needs entrance/exit conditions; diffusion by itself is not a universal reason for a longer mean transit time. No unique anomalous-duration prediction follows from the provided parameters alone.
The squared signal equals except at irrelevant isolated jump times. Its mean-square signal power is therefore
Here “power” has the signal-processing definition specified in the question. To convert this voltage mean square into electrical power in watts, a load electrical resistance would also be required: .
Patch clamp 2026-10-13
Patch clamp connects an electrode to a small area of cell membrane through a solution-filled patch pipette. A gigaohm seal around the rim makes tiny electric currents through ion channels distinguishable from seal leak current. The beautiful change of scale is from a population's average response to individual opening and closing events in single-channel recording.
Separate two questions. The configuration determines which cell membrane is accessible: an intact patch in cell-attached recording, an excised inside-out patch or outside-out patch, or intracellular access in whole-cell recording. The recording mode determines what is commanded and what is observed: voltage clamp commands an electric potential difference and measures electric current; current clamp commands electric current and measures membrane potential. Whole-cell recording supports both modes. A patch can contain several ion channels; a small recording area does not establish that only one is present.
Figure 1.
Patch clamp configurations and synthetic single-channel recording
. Original schematic of cell-attached recording and whole-cell recording, with synthetic electric current traces and a single-channel current-voltage relation. The prescribed opening times are identical at and solely to compare amplitudes. These are not experimental data or a model of opening probability. Membrane potential means the actual voltage across the patch, not automatically the pipette command. Details.
The 1976 article Single-channel currents recorded from membrane of denervated frog muscle fibres describes an extracellular fire-polished pipette with a – opening and – electrical resistance. It contained saline and a channel-activating compound. Two separate intracellular electrodes supplied local voltage clamp of the muscle fibre; the patch amplifier measured local electric current. Cooling to – and hyperpolarization helped resolve elementary events. Figure 2 shows step-like pulses with a filter at and . Discrete amplitudes and overlapping events supported individual ion channel openings rather than a smoothly varying population response. This was neither whole-cell recording through the patch pipette nor current clamp. The specialized conditions improved visibility but limit generalization to warmer preparations; filtering can conceal brief openings.[ref]
For a new single-channel recording experiment, useful controls include a matched recording without the activating compound, controlled membrane potential, repeated seal tests, and an explicitly stated filter frequency response. These are proposed controls, not claims that every one was performed in that 1976 figure. Changing membrane potential tests the single-channel current-voltage relation; changing the recording filter tests whether a short pulse's apparent amplitude is an instrument artifact. A flat baseline establishes neither an absence of ion channels nor an absence of very brief events.
Patch-clamp series resistance, also called patch-clamp access resistance, is the effective electrical resistance between the pipette's sensed voltage and the cell interior. It includes tip access and any remaining obstruction after break-in. For injected electric current into the biological cell, an ideal resistive access path gives
Thus through produces a difference: a substantial possible voltage clamp error. The electric current in this equation is the access-path current, excluding any bypass seal leak current. In current clamp, the same access drop contaminates the pipette voltage during injection. Bridge compensation subtracts an estimated ; an estimate that changes during recording leaves an error.
An independent passive voltage clamp calculation makes both speed and error visible. Write and , with fixed leak reversal potential , constant membrane electrical resistance and membrane capacitance . Assume an ideal command at the pipette node and omit seal leak current and pipette capacitance. Electric charge conservation gives
For a step from , the ordinary differential equation gives
With the figure's parameters and , the time constant is , the final membrane rise is , and access-path electric current falls from to . Only when does the time constant approach and the final voltage approach the command. Actual voltage clamp also depends on amplifier feedback control and the space clamp problem.
Patch pipette 2026-10-13
A patch pipette is the tapered glass, solution-filled probe used in patch clamp. Its electrode connects the solution to an amplifier, with another electrode referencing the bath. The open-tip electrical resistance differs from the much larger gigaohm seal electrical resistance. After break-in, a narrow or partly obstructed tip contributes to patch-clamp series resistance.
Peltier coefficient 2026-10-18
At uniform temperature, define the material Peltier coefficient by transported heat current along positive conventional current:
Its units are . In one dimension, , with electric current density and thermal conductivity . Here heat excludes the electrochemical potential contribution to total energy flux.[ref]
Now orient positive conventional current from material A into material B, at a common junction temperature . Define as heat taken from the junction's thermal surroundings. The outgoing transported heat minus the incoming transported heat gives
The local released heat is . Authors defining a junction coefficient by released heat therefore use the opposite sign. Exchanging A and B reverses the coefficient; reversing at fixed A and B reverses the junction's thermal response. An individual material coefficient and a junction difference are different quantities.
For an original stipulated example, choose and at . The Kelvin thermoelectric relation gives , . A positive flowing A to B absorbs . A separate junction electrical resistance would dissipate for either direction. If all that dissipation heats the junction, its net absorbed power is forwards and backwards. These numbers illustrate a chosen thermal accounting boundary, not measured material data or a universal allocation of contact heating.