On the thermoelectricity of correlated electrons in the zero-temperature limit

TL;DR

This paper investigates the zero-temperature thermoelectric properties of strongly correlated electrons, revealing a universal ratio linking the Seebeck coefficient and specific heat across various materials.

Contribution

It demonstrates a universal correlation between the Seebeck coefficient and specific heat in strongly-interacting electronic systems at zero temperature.

Findings

The Seebeck coefficient correlates with the electronic specific heat across different compounds.

The ratio of these two quantities remains close to unity in many strongly-correlated systems.

This ratio provides insight into the ground state properties of these materials.

Abstract

The Seebeck coefficient of a metal is expected to display a linear temperature-dependence in the zero-temperature limit. To attain this regime, it is often necessary to cool the system well below 1K. We put under scrutiny the magnitude of this term in different families of strongly-interacting electronic systems. For a wide range of compounds (including heavy-fermion, organic and various oxide families) a remarkable correlation between this term and the electronic specific heat is found. We argue that a dimensionless ratio relating these two signatures of mass renormalisation contains interesting information about the ground state of each system. The absolute value of this ratio remains close to unity in a wide range of strongly-correlated electron systems.