Nonequilibrium Extension of Onsager Relations for Thermoelectric Effects of Mesoscopic Conductors

Eiki Iyoda, Yasuhiro Utsumi, Takeo Kato

Published 2009-03-05, updated 2010-02-02Version 2

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.