Thermoelectric transport of mesoscopic conductors coupled to voltage and thermal probes

Abstract

We investigate basic properties of the thermopower (Seebeck coefficient) of phase-coherent conductors under the influence of dephasing and inelastic processes. Transport across the system is caused by a voltage bias or a thermal gradient applied between two terminals. Inelastic scattering is modeled with the aid of an additional probe acting as an ideal potentiometer and thermometer. We find that inelastic scattering reduces the conductor's thermopower and, more unexpectedly, generates a magnetic-field asymmetry in the Seebeck coefficient. The latter effect is shown to be a higher-order effect in the Sommerfeld expansion. We discuss our result using two illustrative examples. First, we consider a generic mesoscopic system described within random matrix theory and demonstrate that thermopower fluctuations disappear quickly as the number of probe modes increases. Second, the asymmetry is explicitly calculated in the quantum limit of a ballistic microjunction. We find that asymmetric scattering strongly enhances the effect and discuss its dependence on temperature and Fermi energy.

4+ pages, 2 figures and supplementary material. Published version

References in corpus (5)

• Thermal Logic Gates: Computation with phonons
• Optimal energy quanta to current conversion
• Thermodynamic Bounds on Efficiency for Systems with Broken Time-reversal Symmetry
• Thermopower with broken time-reversal symmetry
• ThermoElectric Transport Properties of a Chain of Quantum Dots with Self-Consistent Reservoirs

Cited by in corpus (83)

• Fundamental aspects of steady-state conversion of heat to work at the nanoscale
• Anomalous Nernst effect beyond the magnetization scaling relation in the ferromagnetic Heusler compound Co${}_2$MnGa
• Thermoelectric energy harvesting with quantum dots
• Three-Terminal Energy Harvester with Coupled Quantum Dots
• Strong bounds on Onsager coefficients and efficiency for three terminal thermoelectric transport in a magnetic field
• Thermodynamics of Micro- and Nano-Systems Driven by Periodic Temperature Variations
• Finding the quantum thermoelectric with maximal efficiency and minimal entropy production at given power output
• Onsager Relations in Coupled Electric, Thermoelectric and Spin Transport: The Ten-Fold Way
• Chiral thermoelectrics with quantum Hall edge states
• Thermoelectric efficiency of three-terminal quantum thermal machines
• Three-terminal thermoelectric transport through a molecule placed on an Aharonov-Bohm ring
• Power-efficiency-dissipation relations in linear thermodynamics
• Multi-terminal Thermoelectric Transport in a Magnetic Field: Bounds on Onsager Coefficients and Efficiency
• Correlations of heat and charge currents in quantum-dot thermoelectric engines
• Thermopower with broken time-reversal symmetry
• Efficiency of three-terminal thermoelectric transport under broken-time reversal symmetry
• Heat diode and engine based on quantum Hall edge states
• Nonlinear phenomena in quantum thermoelectrics and heat
• Nonlinear thermoelectricity with electron-hole symmetric systems
• Powerful energy harvester based on resonant-tunneling quantum wells
• Nanowires: A route to efficient thermoelectric devices
• Local Temperature of Out-of-Equilibrium Quantum Electron Systems
• Separation of heat and charge currents for boosted thermoelectric conversion
• Local temperatures of strongly-correlated quantum dots out of equilibrium
• Optimal quantum interference thermoelectric heat engine with edge states
• Efficiency bounds on thermoelectric transport in magnetic fields: The role of inelastic processes
• Probing Maxwell's Demon with a Nanoscale Thermometer
• From local force-flux relationships to internal dissipations and their impact on heat engine performance: The illustrative case of a thermoelectric generator
• Local temperature of an interacting quantum system far from equilibrium
• The probe technique far-from-equilibrium: Magnetic field symmetries of nonlinear transport
• Experimental verification of reciprocity relations in quantum thermoelectric transport
• Thermoelectrics with Coulomb coupled quantum dots
• Temperature and voltage measurement in quantum systems far from equilibrium
• Quantifying nonequlibrium thermodynamic operations in a multiterminal mesoscopic system
• Local and non-local thermopowers in three-terminal nanostructures
• From thermal rectifiers to thermoelectric devices
• Electron and phonon drag in thermoelectric transport through coherent molecular conductors
• Probing the energy reactance with adiabatically driven quantum dots
• Dynamical Coulomb blockade of thermal transport
• Brownian thermal transistors and refrigerators in mesoscopic systems
• Unconventional four-terminal thermoelectric transport due to inelastic transport: cooling by transverse current, transverse thermoelectric effect and Maxwell demon
• The effect of Coulomb interactions on nonlinear thermovoltage and thermocurrent in quantum dots
• Inelastic thermoelectric transport and fluctuations in mesoscopic system
• Spin-dependent thermoelectric effects in transport through a nanoscopic junction involving spin impurity
• Railway switch transport model
• Quantum coherence enables hybrid multitask and multisource regimes in autonomous thermal machines
• Helical thermoelectrics and refrigeration
• Cold spots in quantum systems far from equilibrium: local entropies and temperatures near absolute zero
• Fluctuation theorem for heat transport probed by a thermal electrode
• Heat asymmetries in nanoscale conductors: The role of decoherence and inelasticity
• Thermodynamic performance of hot-carrier solar cells: A quantum transport model
• Cavity-photon controlled thermoelectric transport through a quantum wire
• The thermodynamic meaning of local temperature of nonequilibrium open quantum systems
• Thermoelectric Corrections to Quantum Voltage Measurement
• Power-efficiency-fluctuations trade-off in steady-state heat engines: The role of interactions
• Nonlinear chiral refrigerators
• Optimal efficiency and power and their trade-off in three-terminal quantum thermoelectric engines with two output electric currents
• Nanowire-based thermoelectric ratchet in the hopping regime
• Thermoelectric Cooperative Effect in Three-Terminal Elastic Transport through a Quantum Dot
• Defining the effective temperature of a quantum driven system from current-current correlation functions
• Magnetic-field asymmetry of nonlinear thermoelectric and heat transport
• General relations between the power, efficiency and dissipation for the irreversible heat engines in the nonlinear response regime
• Thermoelectric energy converters under a trade-off figure of merit with broken time-reversal symmetry
• Thermoelectric Current and Coulomb-Blockade Plateaus in a Quantum Dot
• Coulomb thermoelectric drag in four-terminal mesoscopic quantum transport
• Scanning probe-induced thermoelectrics in a quantum point contact
• Fundamental aspects of steady state heat to work conversion
• Thermoelectric effects in quantum Hall systems beyond linear response
• Coherent control of thermoelectric currents and noise in quantum thermocouples
• Emergent magnetism as a cooperative effect of interactions and reservoir
• Enhancing Thermoelectric Properties Through a Three-Terminal Benzene Molecule
• Thermal junctions controlled with Aharonov-Bohm phases
• Scattering theory of thermal and bipolar thermoelectric diodes
• Optimal performance of voltage-probe quantum heat engines
• Quantum thermocouples: nonlocal conversion and control of heat in nanostructures
• Thermoelectric efficiency in multiterminal quantum thermal machines from steady-state density functional theory
• Reaching Van den Broeck limit in linear response and Whitney limit in nonlinear response in edge mode quantum thermoelectrics and refrigeration
• Statistical analysis of the figure of merit of a two-level thermoelectric system: a random matrix approach
• Potential Fluctuations at Low Temperatures in Mesoscopic-Scale SmTiO${}_3$/SrTiO${}_3$/SmTiO${}_3$ Quantum Well Structures
• Thermoelectric response of Josephson junction: from ballistic to disordered
• Extrinsic thermoelectric response of coherent conductors
• Conductance matrix symmetries of multiterminal semiconductor-superconductor devices
• Thermoelectric coefficients and the figure of merit for large open quantum dots