A thermoelectric heat engine with ultracold atoms
Prof. Dr. Corinna Kollath (Helmholtz-Institut für Strahlen- und Kernphysik,)

Materials which exhibit strong thermoelectric effects, such as the generation of a particle current by a temperature gradient, have many applications for cooling and power generation as employed in refrigerators and engines. Up to now, the thermoelectric effects have been mainly investigated within solid state materials and more recently in nanostrucutures. However, the thermoelectric properties of materials are often dominated by the excitation of lattice vibrations, such that the separation of electronic and phononic effects is very involved. Atomic gases cooled to Nanokelvin temperatures are a new exciting tool to study thermoelectric phenomena in the absence of phononic excitations. The outstanding tunability of cold gases allows the realization transport geometries in which a conduction channel is coupled to reservoirs. In my talk I will introduce the versatile toolbox of cold atomic gases and discuss the first realization of thermoelectric effects and a heat engine in these gases.