  We present a comprehensive theoretical study of the magnetic field dependence
of the near-field radiative heat transfer (NFRHT) between two parallel plates.
We show that when the plates are made of doped semiconductors, the near-field
thermal radiation can be severely affected by the application of a static
magnetic field. We find that irrespective of its direction, the presence of a
magnetic field reduces the radiative heat conductance, and dramatic reductions
up to 700% can be found with fields of about 6 T at room temperature. We show
that this striking behavior is due to the fact that the magnetic field
radically changes the nature of the NFRHT. The field not only affects the
electromagnetic surface waves (both plasmons and phonon polaritons) that
normally dominate the near-field radiation in doped semiconductors, but it also
induces hyperbolic modes that progressively dominate the heat transfer as the
field increases. In particular, we show that when the field is perpendicular to
the plates, the semiconductors become ideal hyperbolic near-field emitters.
More importantly, by changing the magnetic field, the system can be
continuously tuned from a situation where the surface waves dominate the heat
transfer to a situation where hyperbolic modes completely govern the near-field
thermal radiation. We show that this high tunability can be achieved with
accessible magnetic fields and very common materials like n-doped InSb or Si.
Our study paves the way for an active control of NFRHT and it opens the
possibility to study unique hyperbolic thermal emitters without the need to
resort to complicated metamaterials.
