Charge fluctuations in nonlinear heat transport

We show that charge fluctuation processes are crucial for the nonlinear heat conductance through an interacting nanostructure, even far from a resonance. The often made assumption that off-resonant transport proceeds only by virtual occupation of charge states, underlying exchange-scattering models of transport, can fail dramatically for heat transport as compared to charge transport. This indicates that nonlinear heat transport spectroscopy may be a very promising experimental tool, in particular when combining energy-level control with recent advances in nanoscale thermometry that allow accurate measurements of heat currents. It provides new qualitative information about relaxation processes which can go unnoticed by the traditional charge-current measurements, for instance by strong negative differential heat conductance at positive heat current.