Giant mesoscopic fluctuations of the elastic cotunneling thermopower of a single-electron transistor

Abstract

We study the thermoelectric transport of a small metallic island weakly coupled to two electrodes by tunnel junctions. In the Coulomb blockade regime, in the case when the ground state of the system corresponds to an even number of electrons on the island, the main mechanism of electron transport at lowest temperatures is elastic cotunneling. In this regime, the transport coefficients strongly depend on the realization of the random impurity potential or the shape of the island. Using the random-matrix theory, we calculate the thermopower and the thermoelectric kinetic coefficient and study the statistics of their mesoscopic fluctuations in the elastic cotunneling regime. The fluctuations of the thermopower turn out to be much larger than the average value.

arXiv comment10 pages, 6 figures

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Cited by in corpus (3)

• Fundamental aspects of steady-state conversion of heat to work at the nanoscale
• Non-Linear Thermovoltage in a Single-Electron Transistor
• Mesoscopic electron transport and atomic gases, a review of Frank W. J. Hekking's scientific work