In the linear regime, thermo-electric effects between two conductors are possible only in the presence of an explicit breaking of the electron-hole symmetry. We consider a tunnel junction between two electrodes and show that this condition is no longer required outside the linear regime. In particular, we demonstrate that a thermally-biased junction can display an absolute negative conductance (ANC), and hence thermo-electric power, at a small but finite voltage bias, provided that the density of states of one of the electrodes is gapped and the other is monotonically decreasing. We consider a prototype system that fulfills these requirements, namely a tunnel junction between two different superconductors where the Josephson contribution is suppressed. We discuss this nonlinear thermo-electric effect based on the spontaneous breaking of electron-hole symmetry in the system, characterize its main figures of merit and discuss some possible applications.
We theoretically study how one can control and enhance nonlinear thermoelectricity by regulating quantum coherence in nanostructures such as a quantum dot system or a single-molecule junction. In nanostructures, the typical temperature scale is much smaller than the resonance width, which largely suppresses thermoelectric effects. Yet we demonstrate one can achieve a reasonably good thermoelectric performance by regulating quantum coherence. Engaging a quantum-dot interferometer (a quantum dot embedded in the ring geometry) as a heat engine, we explore the idea of thermoelectric enhancement in…
We investigate the noise current in a thermally biased tunnel junction between two superconductors with different zero-temperature gaps. When the Josephson effect is suppressed, this structure can support a nonlinear thermoelectric effect due to the spontaneous breaking of electron-hole symmetry, as we recently theoretically predicted. We discuss the possibly relevant role played by the noise in the junction. While a moderate noise contribution assists the generation of the thermoelectric signal, further unveiling the spontaneous nature of the electron-hole symmetry breaking, a large noise con…
Scattering Theory of Nonlinear Thermoelectricity in Quantum Coherent Conductors
本文建立了亚微米尺度导体中弱非线性热电输运的散射理论。该理论结合了领先的非线性贡献的温度和电压偏置的充电和热电流。由于亚微米尺度导电电路的有限电容，基本的守恒定律，如规范不变性和电流守恒，需要特别注意保持。我们通过扩展Christen和Büttiker [Europhys. Lett. 35，523（1996）]的电荷和热传输耦合。在这种方式中，我们写的关系连接非线性输运系数的方式类似于莫特的关系之间的线性热电势和线性电导。我们推导出非线性输运系数必须满足的求和规则，以保持规范不变性和电流守恒。我们通过计算热机的效率和基于量子点接触和共振隧穿势垒的热电制冷器的性能系数来说明我们的理论。我们确定特别是整流效果，提高设备的性能。
In a previous work, we predicted that a thermally biased tunnel junction between two different superconductors can display a thermoelectric effect of nonlinear nature in the temperature gradient, under proper conditions. In this work we give a more extended discussion, and we focus on the two main features of the nonlinear contributions: i) the $linear-in-bias$ thermoelectricity, that can be associated to a spontaneous breaking of electron-hole symmetry, ii) the strong contribution at the matching peak singularity, which is typically associated to the maximum output power and efficiency. We di…
Superconducting tunnel junctions constitute the units of superconducting quantum circuits and are massively used both for quantum sensing and quantum computation. In previous works, we predicted the existence of a nonlinear thermoelectric effect in a electron-hole symmetric system, namely, a thermally biased tunnel junction between two different superconductors, where the Josephson effect is suppressed. In this paper we investigate the impact of the phase-coherent contributions on the thermoelectric effect, by tuning the size of the Josephson coupling changing the flux of a direct-current Supe…
At nonlinear orders in the electric field, the vanishing of the Hall conductivity does not prevent the nonlinear component of the current from being transverse for selected field directions. We study electrons on $\mathcal{C}_{3v}$-symmetric honeycomb lattice for which the Hall conductivity vanishes at first and second order. Nevertheless, the second-order current component is transverse for fields perpendicular to the three mirror lines. The $\mathcal{C}_{3v}$ symmetry constrains the first-order and second-order conductivity tensors to have only one independent component each, which we calcul…
We theoretically investigate a nonlinear spin Hall effect in $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric antiferromagnetic metals, which serve as an efficient spin current generator. We elucidate that an emergent spin-dependent Berry curvature dipole is a microscopic origin of the nonlinear spin Hall effect, which becomes nonzero with neither relativistic spin-orbit coupling, uniform magnetization, nor spin-split band structure. By analyzing a microscopic antiferromagnetic model without spin-orbit coupling for an intuitive understanding of the phenomena, we elucidate essential hopping processes and a condition t…
