Transport properties and thermopower of the spinful Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev dot

Abstract

We study the electric and thermoelectric transport through a spinful complex Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev (SYK) quantum dot coupled to metallic leads, forming a N-SYK-N junction, by the Keldysh field theory approach. Unlike traditional equilibrium approaches, our formulation treats the system as an open, interacting quantum conductor under non-equilibrium conditions, without resorting to the replica trick. Starting from the exact Keldysh-Dyson equations, we derive analytical results for the tunneling and zero-temperature limits and perform a numerical analysis in the linear-response regime. We characterize the dependence of conductance, thermoelectric coefficient, and Seebeck effect on the particle-hole asymmetry parameter and coupling strength to the leads. Our results reveal distinctive non-Fermi liquid signatures of the SYK model in transport properties and identify coupling regimes where thermoelectric effects are enhanced, suggesting experimentally accessible fingerprints of SYK physics in mesoscopic systems.