Thermoelectric coefficients and the figure of merit for large open quantum dots

We consider the thermoelectric response of chaotic or disordered quantum dots in the limit of phase-coherent transport, statistically described by random matrix theory. We calculate the full distribution of the thermoelectric coefficients (Seebeck $S$ and Peltier $\Pi$), and the thermoelectric fi...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Robert S. Whitney, Keiji Saito
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: SciPost 2019-01-01
Series:SciPost Physics
Online Access:https://scipost.org/SciPostPhys.6.1.012
Description
Summary:We consider the thermoelectric response of chaotic or disordered quantum dots in the limit of phase-coherent transport, statistically described by random matrix theory. We calculate the full distribution of the thermoelectric coefficients (Seebeck $S$ and Peltier $\Pi$), and the thermoelectric figure of merit $ZT$, for large open dots at arbitrary temperature and external magnetic field, when the number of modes in the left and right leads ($N_{\rm L}$ and $N_{\rm R}$) are large. Our results show that the thermoelectric coefficients and $ZT$ are maximal when the temperature is half the Thouless energy, and the magnetic field is negligible. They remain small, even at their maximum, but they exhibit a type of universality at all temperatures, in which they do not depend on the asymmetry between the left and right leads $(N_{\rm L}-N_{\rm R})$, even though they depend on $(N_{\rm L}+N_{\rm R})$.
ISSN:2542-4653