Effect of the Kondo correlation on the thermopower in a quantum dot

In this paper we study the thermopower of a quantum dot (QD) connected to two leads in the presence of Kondo correlation by employing a modified second-order perturbation scheme at nonequilibrium. A simple scheme, Ng's ansatz(Ng T K 1996 Phys. Rev. Lett. 76 487), is adopted to calculate the nonequilibrium distribution Green function and its validity is further checked with regard to the Onsager relation. Numerical results demonstrate that the sign of the thermopower can be changed by tuning the energy level of the QD, leading to a oscillatory behaviour with a suppressed magnitude due to the Kondo effect. We also calculate the thermal conductance of the system, and find that the Wiedemann-Franz law is obeyed at low temperature but violated with increasing temperature, corresponding to emerging and quenching of the Kondo effect.