Differential thermopower images as a probe of many-body effects in quantum point contacts

Abstract Mesoscopic circuit elements such as quantum dots and quantum point contacts (QPCs) offer a uniquely controllable platform for engineering complex quantum devices, whose tunability makes them ideal for generating and investigating interacting quantum systems. However, the conductance measurements commonly employed in mesoscopics experiments are poorly suited to discerning correlated phenomena from those of single-particle origin. Here, we introduce non-equilibrium thermopower measurements as a novel approach to probing the local density of states (LDOS), offering an energy-resolved readout of many-body effects. We combine differential thermopower measurements with non-equilibrium density functional theory (DFT) to both confirm the presence of a localized state at the saddle point of a QPC and reveal secondary states that emerge wherever the reservoir chemical potential intersects the gate-induced potential barrier. These experiments establish differential thermopower imaging as a robust and general approach to exploring quantum many-body effects in mesoscopic circuits.