Spin-current Seebeck effect in an interacting quantum dot: Atomic approximation for the Anderson impurity model

Abstract

We study the spin-current Seebeck effect through an immersed gate defined quantum dot, employing the U-finite atomic method for the single impurity Anderson model. Our description qualitatively confirms some of the results obtained by an earlier Hartree–Fock work, but as our calculation includes the Kondo effect, some new features will appear in the spin-current Seebeck effect S, which as a function of the gate voltage present an oscillatory shape. At intermediate temperatures, our results show a three zero structure and at low temperatures, our results are governed by the emergence of the Kondo peak in the transmittance, which defines the behavior of the shape of the S coefficient as a function of the parameters of the model.The oscillatory behavior obtained by the Hartree–Fock approximation reproduces the shape obtained by us in a non-interacting system (U=0). The S sign is sensitive to different polarization of the quantum dot, and as a consequence the device could be employed to experimentally detect the polarization states of the system. Our results also confirm that the large increase of S upon increasing U, obtained by the mean field approximation, is correct only for low temperatures. We also discuss the role of the Kondo peak in defining the behavior of the spin thermopower at low temperatures.