Nonequilibrium Extension of Onsager Relations for Thermoelectric Effects of Mesoscopic Conductors

TL;DR

This paper derives a universal relation between thermoelectric coefficients in nonequilibrium mesoscopic conductors using quantum fluctuation theorems, enabling inference of heat currents from electrical measurements.

Contribution

It extends Onsager relations to nonlinear regimes in mesoscopic systems with Coulomb interactions, based on quantum fluctuation theorems.

Findings

Universal relation between Peltier and Seebeck coefficients in nonlinear regime

Extended Kelvin-Onsager relation applicable to mesoscopic conductors

Method to estimate heat current from electrical measurements

Abstract

We discuss a consequence of time reversal symmetry on thermoelectric effect in nonequilibrium coherent quantum transport. Starting with a quantum version of the fluctuation theorem, we show that there exist universal relations between the Peltier coefficient and the Seebeck coefficient of general mesoscopic systems with Coulomb interaction in a nonlinear regime. This extended Kelvin-Onsager relation may be used to obtain useful information on heat current, e.g. the nonlinear Peltier coefficient, which is difficult to be measured in a usual setup of experiments, only from electric current measurement.