Effect of incoherent scattering on three-terminal quantum Hall thermoelectrics

TL;DR

This paper explores how incoherent scattering affects three-terminal quantum Hall thermoelectrics, revealing that chiral edge effects persist and can enhance thermoelectric performance even without coherence.

Contribution

It demonstrates that chiral effects in quantum Hall thermoelectrics survive incoherence and can improve performance, challenging the assumption that coherence is essential.

Findings

Chiral effects persist despite incoherence.

Incoherence can enhance thermoelectric performance.

Incoherent regime still exhibits rectification and thermal diode behavior.

Abstract

A three-terminal conductor presents peculiar thermoelectric and thermal properties in the quantum Hall regime: it can behave as a symmetric rectifier and as an ideal thermal diode. These properties rely on the coherent propagation along chiral edge channels. We investigate the effect of breaking the coherent propagation by the introduction of a probe terminal. It is shown that chiral effects not only survive the presence of incoherence but they can even improve the thermoelectric performance in the totally incoherent regime.