How to measure the entropy of a mesoscopic system via thermoelectric transport

Yaakov Kleeorin*, Holger Thierschmann, Hartmut Buhmann, Antoine Georges, Laurens W. Molenkamp, Yigal Meir

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticleScientificpeer-review

    34 Citations (Scopus)
    71 Downloads (Pure)

    Abstract

    Entropy is a fundamental thermodynamic quantity indicative of the accessible degrees of freedom in a system. While it has been suggested that the entropy of a mesoscopic system can yield nontrivial information on emergence of exotic states, its measurement in such small electron-number system is a daunting task. Here we propose a method to extract the entropy of a Coulomb-blockaded mesoscopic system from transport measurements. We prove analytically and demonstrate numerically the applicability of the method to such a mesoscopic system of arbitrary spectrum and degeneracies. We then apply our procedure to measurements of thermoelectric response of a single quantum dot, and demonstrate how it can be used to deduce the entropy change across Coulomb-blockade valleys, resolving, along the way, a long-standing puzzle of the experimentally observed finite thermoelectric response at the apparent particle-hole symmetric point.

    Original languageEnglish
    Article number5801
    Number of pages8
    JournalNature Communications
    Volume10
    Issue number1
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2019

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