Thermoelectric response of a weakly magnetized thermal QCD medium

Abstract

We estimate the thermoelectric response, namely, the Seebeck and Nernst coefficients of a hot and deconfined plasma of quarks and gluons, created post ultrarelativistic heavy ion collisions in the presence of a weak, homogeneous background magnetic field. We employ the kinetic theory framework, wherein we use the relativistic Boltzmann transport equation in the relaxation time approximation. In-medium interactions are taken into account via the quasiparticle masses of the partons extracted from one loop perturbative thermal QCD. We calculate the individual and total Seebeck coefficients in 2 different approaches (1-D and 2-D formulations). In the 1-D analysis, we find that a larger current quark mass has an amplifying effect on the individual Seebeck coefficient in the presence of a weak magnetic field. The temperature sensitivities of the individual Seebeck coefficients increase with increase in the current mass of the quark species in the case of a weak magnetic field whereas the same records a decreasing trend in the presence of a strong magnetic field. The variation of individual and total Seebeck coefficients with temperature, chemical potential and background magnetic field are found to follow similar trends in both the approaches, viz. decrease in magnitude with increasing temperature and increase in magnitude with increase in chemical potential and magnetic field. We also calculate the individual and total Nernst coefficients (in 2-D formulation) which are found to decrease with both temperature and chemical potential and increase with the magnetic field. Further, we find that the sign of the Nernst coefficient is independent of the electric charge of the charge carrier of the medium.