A thermoelectric heat engine with ultracold atoms

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates thermoelectric effects in a cold atom system, showing controllable energy conversion and providing a model for exploring thermoelectric mechanisms with potential applications in cooling and power generation.

Contribution

It introduces a cold atom-based thermoelectric heat engine and validates a theoretical model, enabling controlled studies of energy conversion mechanisms.

Findings

Thermoelectric effects observed in fermionic cold atom channels.

Efficiency can be optimized by adjusting geometry or disorder.

Results agree quantitatively with Landauer-Büttiker formalism.

Abstract

Thermoelectric effects, such as the generation of a particle current by a temperature gradient, have their origin in a reversible coupling between heat and particle flows. These effects are fundamental probes for materials and have applications to cooling and power generation. Here we demonstrate thermoelectricity in a fermionic cold atoms channel, ballistic or diffusive, connected to two reservoirs. We show that the magnitude of the effect and the efficiency of energy conversion can be optimized by controlling the geometry or disorder strength. Our observations are in quantitative agreement with a theoretical model based on the Landauer-Bu ttiker formalism. Our device provides a controllable model-system to explore mechanisms of energy conversion and realizes a cold atom based heat engine.