We study transport properties of weakly interacting spinless electrons in one-dimensional single channel quantum wires. The effects of interaction manifest as three-particle collisions due to the severe constraints imposed by the conservation laws on the two-body processes. We focus on short wires where the effects of equilibration on the distribution function can be neglected and collision integral can be treated in perturbation theory. We find that interaction-induced corrections to conductance and thermopower rely on the scattering processes that change number of right- and left-moving electrons. The latter requires transition at the bottom of the band which is exponentially suppressed at low temperatures. Our theory is based on the scattering approach that is beyond the Luttinger-liquid limit. We emphasize the crucial role of the exchange terms in the three-particle scattering amplitude that was not discussed in the previous studies.
Interference effects in quantum dots between different transport channels can lead to a strong suppression of conductance, which cuts like a canyon through the common conductance plot [Phys. Rev. Lett. 104, 186804 (2010)]. In the present work, we consider the thermoelectric transport properties of the canyon of conductance suppression using the second-order von Neumann approach. We observe a characteristic signal for the zeros of the thermopower. This demonstrates that thermoelectric measurements are an interesting complimentary tool to study complex phenomena for transport through confined sy…
We numerically study the effect of the edge states on the conductance and thermopower in zigzag phosphorene nanoribbons (ZPNRs) based on the tight-binding model and the scattering-matrix method. It is interesting to find that the band dispersion, conductance, and thermopower can be modulated by applying a bias voltage and boundary potentials to the two layers of the ZPNRs. Under the certain bias voltage, the two-fold degenerate quasi-flat edge bands split perfectly. The conductance can be switched off, and the thermopower around zero energy increases. In addition, when only the boundary potent…
Helicenes are inherently chiral polyaromatic molecules composed of all-ortho fused benzene rings possessing a spring-like structure. Here, using a combination of density functional theory and tight-binding calculations, it is demonstrated that controlling the length of the helicene molecule by mechanically stretching or compressing the molecular junction can dramatically change the electronic properties of the helicene, leading to a tunable switching behavior of the conductance and thermopower of the junction with on/off ratios of several orders of magnitude. Furthermore, control over the heli…
We study the electrical conductance $G$ and the thermopower $S$ of single-molecule junctions, and reveal signatures of different transport mechanisms: off-resonant tunneling, on-resonant coherent (ballistic) motion, and multi-step hopping. These mechanisms are identified by studying the behavior of $G$ and $S$ while varying molecular length and temperature. Based on a simple one-dimensional model for molecular junctions, we derive approximate expressions for the thermopower in these different regimes. Analytical results are compared to numerical simulations, performed using a variant of Büttik…
We report a method using scanning tunnelling microscope single molecular break junction to simultaneously measure and correlate the single-molecule thermopower and electrical conductance. In contrast to previously reported approaches, it does not require custom-built electronics and takes advantage of a trace-by-trace calibration of the thermal offset at the Au/Au contact, thus greatly facilitating thermoelectric measurements at the single-molecule level. We report measurements of three molecules: 1,4-di(4-(ethynyl(phenylthioacetate)) benzene, 1,8-octanedithiol, and 4,4'-bipyridine, and determ…
We find the charge and heat currents caused by a temperature difference applied to a superconducting point contact or to a quantum point contact between a superconducting and normal conductors. The results are formulated in terms of the properties of the electron scattering matrix of the quantum point contact in its normal state, and are valid at any transmission coefficient. In the low-transmission limit, the new theory provides reliable results, setting the limits for the use of the popular method of tunnel Hamiltonian.
This study analyzes thermoelectric properties of a one-dimensional random conductor which shows localization effects and simultaneously includes resonant scatterers yielding sharp conductance resonances. These sharp features give rise to a distinct behavior of the Seebeck coefficient in finite systems and incorporate the degree of localization as a means to enhance thermoelectric performance, in principle. The model for non-interacting electrons is discussed within the Landauer-Büttiker formalism such that analytical treatment is possible for a wide range of properties, if a special averaging …
Mesoscopic circuit elements such as quantum dots and quantum point contacts (QPCs) offer a uniquely controllable platform for engineering complex quantum devices, whose tunability makes them ideal for generating and investigating interacting quantum systems. However, the conductance measurements commonly employed in mesoscopics experiments are poorly suited to discerning correlated phenomena from those of single-particle origin. Here, we introduce non-equilibrium thermopower measurements as a novel approach to probing the local density of states (LDOS), offering an energy-resolved readout of m…
We present thermopower $S$ and resistance $R$ measurements on GaAs-based mesoscopic two-dimensional electron gases (2DEGs) as functions of the electron density $n_s$. At high $n_s$ we observe good agreement between the measured $S$ and $S_{\rm{MOTT}}$, the Mott prediction for a non-interacting metal. As $n_s$ is lowered, we observe a crossover from Mott-like behaviour to that where $S$ shows strong oscillations and even sign changes. Remarkably, there are absolutely no features in $R$ corresponding to those in $S$. In fact, $R$ is devoid of even any universal conductance fluctuations. A statis…
The thermoelectric effects in three-terminal structures with a quantum dot are considered. We propose the experimentally consistent protocol for determination of the transport coefficients in terms of the local and non-local conductances and thermopowers that can be measured in two steps, applying the `four probe technique'. This proposal is compared with other approaches discussed so far in the literature. As an example we study in detail the thermopower induced by the superconducting electrode in a subgap regime which might be useful for analysis of novel hybrid devices.
We report the experimental observation of quantized conductance by Rashba bands at the surface of 50-nm Bi nanowires. With increasing magnetic fields along the wire axis, the wires exhibit a stepwise increase of conductance with as many as four distinct plateaus together with oscillatory thermopower. The observations can be accounted for by the increase of the number of propagating surface modes. The modes have very high mobility and are associated with Aharonov-Bohm interference around the perimeter consistently with theory of quasiballistic one-dimensional nanowires considering that Lorentz …
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 property's temperature dependence should be a universal function of the ratio $T^{*}=T/T_{K}$, where $T_{K}$ is the Kondo temperature. Considering the particl…
Using the conformal field theory approach to the thermoelectric characteristics of fractional quantum Hall states, previously developed in Nucl. Phys. B 894 (2015) 284, we show that the thermoelectric power factor of Coulomb-blockaded islands, realized by point contacts in Fabry--Pérot interferometers in the $\mathbb{Z}_k$ parafermion Hall states, could give reliable signatures for distinguishing the topological orders of different quantum Hall states having identical electric properties. For example, while the conductance peak patterns in the Coulomb blockade regime for such states are practi…
We investigate a possibility of pair electron-electron e-e collisions in a ballistic wire with spin-orbit coupling and only one populated mode. Unlike in a spin-degenerate system, a combination of spin-splitting in momentum space with a momentum-dependent spin-precession opens up a finite phase space for pair e-e collisions around three distinct positions of the wire's chemical potential. For a short wire, we calculate corresponding resonant contributions to the conductance, which have different power-law temperature dependencies, and, in some cases, vanish if the wire's transverse confinement…
We study the thermoelectric transport through a single-level quantum dot (QD) coupled to two normal metallic leads and side-coupled to Majorana bound state (MBS). The Coulomb interaction in QD is considered. To investigate only the influence of MBS on thermoelectric transport, we focus on the relatively high temperature region ($T\gg T_K$), where Kondo effect does not appear. The electric and thermal conductance and thermopower as a function of gate voltage (i.e. QD level) are completely different whether the coupling between MBSs is zero or not. When the coupling between MBSs is finite, all t…
