Secondment in Konstanz

I began my last secondment at the beginning of February in Konstanz. Unfortunately, this time it was done remotely not in person.

Prof. Scheer came up with an interesting project for me to do remotely. It is related to a recent thermopower experiment on atomic-size Au contact realized by the mechanically controllable break junction (MCBJ) technique. The measurement results showed a non-monotonous temperature dependence of thermopower. The observation at low and high temperatures is in line with the values reported in the literature whereas the non-monotonous behavior is still an open question. So I am working on theoretical modeling of thermopower based on the Landauer formula to estimate how big the non-linear terms in the transmission function would need to be to observe this behavior in the thermopower and to be able to interpret the experimental data.

Here is a photo of our meeting yesterday together with Prof.Scheer and Prof. Belzig after discussing my simulations.