Thermoelectricity of interacting particles: A numerical approach

A method for computing the thermopower in interacting systems is proposed. This approach, which relies on Monte Carlo simulations, is illustrated first for a diatomic chain of hard-point elastically colliding particles and then in the case of a one-dimensional gas with (screened) Coulomb interparticle interaction. Numerical simulations up to N>104 particles confirm the general theoretical arguments for momentum-conserving systems and show that the thermoelectric figure of merit increases linearly with the system size.