Electronic measurements of entropy in meso- and nanoscale systems

Abstract

Entropy is one of the most fundamental quantities in physics. For systems with few degrees of freedom, the value of entropy provides a powerful insight into its microscopic dynamics, such as the number, degeneracy and relative energies of electronic states, the value of spin, degree of localisation and entanglement, and the emergence of exotic states such as non-Abelian anyons. As the size of a system decreases, the conventional methods for measuring entropy, based on heat capacity, quickly become infeasible due to the requirement of increasingly accurate measurements of heat. Several methods to directly measure entropy of mesoscopic quantum systems have recently been developed. These methods use electronic measurements of charge, conductance and thermocurrent, rather than heat, and have been successfully applied to a wide range of systems, from quantum dots and molecules, to quantum Hall states and twisted bilayer graphene. In this Review, we provide an overview of electronic direct entropy measurement methods, discuss their theoretical background, compare their ranges of applicability and look into the directions for their future extensions and applications. CONTENTS I. Introduction 1 II. Alternative entropy measurements in continuous-charge nanodevices 2 A. Thermocurrent-based method for bulk materials 3 B. Maxwell relations for entropy measurements 3 C. Charge continuity assumptions 3 III. Quantised-charge nanodevices 4 A. The effects of charge quantisation 4 B. Degeneracy effects in electrical properties of nanodevices 5 C. Thermodynamic parameters of a quantised-charge system 5 D. Maxwell relations in quantised-charge systems 6 E. Quantised-charge entropy measurement methods 6 F. Limitations of entropy measurement methods 8 IV. Current applications 9 A. Detection of non-Abelian anyons. 9 B. Twisted bilayer graphene. 9 C. Single electron transistors 9 V. Discussion and Outlook 10 VI. Conclusion 11 VII. Acknowledgements 11