Effects of photon field on heat transport through a quantum wire attached to leads

Highlights: • The characteristics of thermal transport are studied by tuning the ratio between the thermal and photon energies. • Photon replica states have a big role in thermal transport. • The heat and thermoelectric currents can be controlled by the quantized photons in a cavity. - Abstract: We theoretically investigate photo-thermoelectric transport through a quantum wire in a photon cavity coupled to electron reservoirs with different temperatures. Our approach, based on a quantum master equation, allows us to investigate the influence of a quantized photon field on the heat current and thermoelectric transport in the system. We find that the heat current through the quantum wire is influenced by the photon field resulting in a negative heat current in certain cases. The characteristics of the transport are studied by tuning the ratio, $ħ{\omega }_{\gamma }/k_B\Delta T$, between the photon energy, $ħ{\omega }_{\gamma }$, and the thermal energy, $k_B\Delta T$. The thermoelectric transport is enhanced by the cavity photons when $k_B\Delta T>ħ{\omega }_{\gamma }$. By contrast, if $k_B\Delta T<ħ{\omega }_{\gamma }$, the photon field is dominant and a suppression in the thermoelectric transport can be found in the case when the cavity-photon field is close to a resonance with the two lowest one-electron states in the system. Our approach points to a new technique to amplify thermoelectric current in nano-devices.