The cooling of boiling water all the way down to freezing, by thermally connecting it to a thermal bath held at ambient temperature without external intervention, would be quite unexpected. We describe the equivalent of a “thermal inductor,” composed of a Peltier element and an electric inductance, which can drive the temperature difference between two bodies to change sign by imposing inertia on the heat flowing between them, and enable continuing heat transfer from the chilling body to its warmer counterpart without the need of an external driving force. We demonstrate its operation in an experiment and show that the process can pass through a series of quasi-equilibrium states while fully complying with the second law of thermodynamics. This thermal inductor extends the analogy between electrical and thermal circuits and could serve, with further progress in thermoelectric materials, to cool hot materials well below ambient temperature without external energy supplies or moving parts.

通过将沸水热连接到保持在环境温度下的热浴而无需外部干预的方式，将沸水一直冷却到冻结，这是非常出乎意料的。我们描述了由珀尔帖元件和电感组成的“热感应器”的等效形式，它可以驱动两个物体之间的温差，通过在它们之间流动的热量上施加惯性来改变符号，并实现从两个物体之间继续传热。无需额外的驱动力即可将其冷却到较温暖的身体。我们通过实验证明其运行，并表明该过程可以通过一系列准平衡状态，同时完全符合热力学第二定律。这种热感应器扩展了电路和热电路之间的类比，可以用于