Electronically driven soliton-like thermal pulses

Solitons are self-sustained wave packets that arise in wave systems and maintain their shape during propagation by balancing nonlinear and dispersive effects, exhibiting stability, robustness, and particle-like interactions. However, localized traveling temperature pulses are difficult to sustain in thermal media, as diffusion rapidly broadens and attenuates localized profiles and intrinsic driving and nonlinearity are generally absent. Here, we show that electronic driving offers a pathway to circumvent these limitations through programmable thermoelectric interfaces, enabling precise, dynamic modulation and the construction of reconfigurable coupling networks. Using this approach, we experimentally demonstrate wave-like transport behavior in a thermoelectric metamaterial with electronically controlled couplings. Within a non-Hermitian framework, a pseudo-convection effect propels thermal fields; further incorporating nonlinearity leads to soliton-like thermal pulses that display markedly reduced amplitude decay and relative broadening compared with linear diffusive dynamics. Our observations reveal the synergistic effect of circuit-mediated non-Hermicity and nonlinearity, providing a mechanism for localized energy propagation and information transmission. Solitons are ubiquitous phenomena, yet controlling both propagation and localization in thermal fields is challenging. Here, the authors demonstrate thermal and heat solitons in electronically driven thermoelectric metamaterials, based on the interplay of non-Hermitian and thermal features.