Super- and semiconducting quantum thermoelectrics: from fluxons to measurement tunneling quantum engines

I will present recent results about thermoelectric behavior in semiconducting and superconducting systems. We predict that there is a giant thermoelectric response of an Abrikosov vortex in type-II superconductors in the deep quantum limit because of strong breaking of particle-hole symmetry in vortex-bound states at subgap energies within the superconducting vortex. A thermovoltage of a few mV/K is predicted [1]. I will also present results of two types of measurement-powered quantum engines in semi-conducting systems. For a measurement powered engine, a microscopic model of the apparatus is necessary to unambiguously determine whether quantum measurements provide energy in the form of heat or work. A measurement-based refrigerator, made of a double quantum dot embedded in a two-terminal device, with the charge of one of the dots being continuously monitored is given as an example [2]. A second semi-conducting measurement engine will be presented, consisting of a triple quantum dot system operating in the tunneling regime that can use the unconditioned detection of virtually occupied states [3] as a resource for power generation and cooling [4].