Thermoelectric transport coefficients of hot and dense QCD matter

Abstract

The presence of a nonvanishing thermal gradient and/or a chemical potential gradient in a conducting medium can lead to an electric field—an effect known as thermoelectric effect or Seebeck effect. We discuss here the thermoelectric effects for hot and dense strongly interacting matter within the framework of relativistic Boltzmann equation in the relaxation time approximation. In the context of heavy-ion collisions, the Seebeck coefficients for the quark matter as well as for the hadronic matter are estimated within this approach. The quark matter is modeled by the two flavor Nambu–Jona–Lassinio (NJL) model and the hadronic medium is modeled by the hadron resonance gas (HRG) model with hadrons and their resonances up to a mass cutoff GeV. For the estimation of thermoelectric transport coefficients, for the quark matter, we calculate the relaxation times for the quarks and antiquarks from the quark–quark and quark–antiquark scattering through meson exchange within the NJL model. On the other hand, for the hadronic medium, the relaxation times of hadrons and their resonances are estimated within a hard sphere scattering approximation. We also discuss the formalism of the thermoelectric effect in the presence of a nonvanishing external magnetic field. We give an estimation of the associated magneto-Seebeck coefficient and the Nernst coefficient for the hot and dense QCD matter.