No Arabic abstract
We discuss the temperature-dependent thermoelectric transport properties of semiconductor nanostructures comprising a quantum dot coupled to quantum wires: the thermal dependence of the electrical conductance, thermal conductance, and thermopower. We explore the universality of the thermoelectric properties in the temperature range associated with the Kondo crossover. In this thermal range, general arguments indicate that any equilibrium propertys temperature dependence should be a universal function of the ratio $T^{*}=T/T_{K}$, where $T_{K}$ is the Kondo temperature. Considering the particle-hole symmetric, spin-degenerate Anderson model, the zero-bias electrical conductance has already been shown to map linearly onto a universal conductance through a quantum dot embedded or side-coupled to a quantum wire. Employing rigorous renormalization-group arguments, we calculate universal thermoelectric transport coefficients that allow us to extend this result to the thermopower and the thermal conductance. We present numerical renormalization-group results to illustrate the physics in our findings. Applying the universal thermoelectric coefficients to recent experimental results of the electrical conductance and thermo-voltages versus $V_{gate}$, at different temperatures in the Kondo regime, we calculate all the thermoelectric properties and obtain simple analytical fitting functions that can be used to predict the experimental results of these properties. However, we cannot check all of them, due to the lack of available experimental results over a broad temperature range.
We revisited the scaling behavior of the transport properties of a quantum dot system described by the spin-1/2 Anderson model using analytical methods. In the low temperature limit we show that the conductance has a universal behavior with universality between temperature and bias. We compare this result with the empirical formula used to fit the experimental data for conductance in the case of the equilibrium transport through a single channel quantum dot. In the high temperature limit the conductance obtained from the Anderson model is compared with previous results obtained from the Kondo model. The universal behavior is present also in the high temperature limit. These results are in good agreement with the Renormalization group calculations.
Quantum dots are useful model systems for studying quantum thermoelectric behavior because of their highly energy-dependent electron transport properties, which are tunable by electrostatic gating. As a result of this strong energy dependence, the thermoelectric response of quantum dots is expected to be nonlinear with respect to an applied thermal bias. However, until now this effect has been challenging to observe because, first, it is experimentally difficult to apply a sufficiently large thermal bias at the nanoscale and, second, it is difficult to distinguish thermal bias effects from purely temperature-dependent effects due to overall heating of a device. Here we take advantage of a novel thermal biasing technique and demonstrate a nonlinear thermoelectric response in a quantum dot which is defined in a heterostructured semiconductor nanowire. We also show that a theoretical model based on the Master equations fully explains the observed nonlinear thermoelectric response given the energy-dependent transport properties of the quantum dot.
We investigate the thermoelectric properties of a T-shaped double quantum dot system described by a generalized Anderson Hamiltonian. The systems electrical conduction (G) and the fundamental thermoelectric parameters such as the Seebeck coefficient ($S$) and the thermal conductivity ($kappa$), along with the systems thermoelectric figure of merit (ZT) are numerically estimated based on a Greens function formalism that includes contributions up to the Hartree-Fock level. Our results account for finite onsite Coulomb interaction terms in both component quantum dots and discuss various ways leading to an enhanced thermoelectric figure of merit for the system. We demonstrate that the presence of Fano resonances in the Coulomb blockade regime is responsible for a strong violation of the Wiedemann-Franz law and a considerable enhancement of the systems figure of merit ($ZT$).
In this paper we compare Bose transport in normal phase atomic gases with its counterpart in Fermi gases, illustrating the non-universality of two dimensional bosonic transport associated with different dissipation mechanisms. Near the superfluid transition temperature $T_c$, a striking similarity between the fermionic and bosonic transport emerges because super-conducting(fluid) fluctuation transport for Fermi gases is dominated by the bosonic, Cooper pair component. As in fluctuation theory, one finds that the Seebeck coefficient changes sign at $T_c$ and the Lorenz number approaches zero at $T_c$. Our findings appear semi-quantitatively consistent with recent Bose gas experiments.
This paper examines the thermoelectric response of a dissipative quantum dot heat engine based on the Anderson-Holstein model in two relevant operating limits: (i) when the dot phonon modes are out of equilibrium, and (ii) when the dot phonon modes are strongly coupled to a heat bath. In the first case, a detailed analysis of the physics related to the interplay between the quantum dot level quantization, the on-site Coulomb interaction and the electron-phonon coupling on the thermoelectric performance reveals that an n-type heat engine performs better than a p-type heat engine. In the second case, with the aid of the dot temperature estimated by incorporating a {it{thermometer bath}}, it is shown that the dot temperature deviates from the bath temperature as electron-phonon interaction becomes stronger. Consequently, it is demonstrated that the dot temperature controls the direction of phonon heat currents, thereby influencing the thermoelectric performance. Finally, the conditions on the maximum efficiency with varying phonon couplings between the dot and all the other macroscopic bodies are analyzed in order to reveal the nature of the optimum junction.