Magnetothermopower of nodal line semimetals

Abstract

The search for materials with large thermopower is of great practical interest. Dirac and Weyl semimetals have recently proven to exhibit superior thermoelectric properties, particularly when subjected to a quantizing magnetic field. Here we consider whether a similar enhancement arises in nodal line semimetals, for which the conduction and valence band meet at a line or ring in momentum space. We compute the Seebeck and Nernst coefficients for arbitrary temperature and magnetic field and we find a wealth of different scaling regimes. Most strikingly, when a sufficiently strong magnetic field is applied along the direction of a straight nodal line or in the plane of a nodal ring, the large degeneracy of states leads to a large, linear-in-$B$ thermopower that is temperature-independent even at low temperatures. Our results suggest that nodal line semimetals may offer significant opportunity for efficient, low-temperature thermoelectrics.