Coherent control of thermoelectric currents and noise in quantum thermocouples

Abstract

Three-terminal coherent conductors are able to perform as quantum thermocouples when the heat absorbed from one terminal is transformed into useful power in the other two. Allowing for a phase coherent coupling to the heat source, we introduce a way to control and improve the thermoelectric response via quantum interference. A simple setup composed of a scanning probe between two resonant tunneling regions is proposed that achieves better performance than incoherent analogs by enhancing the generated power and efficiency, and reducing the output current noise.