Transverse thermoelectric transport in a model of many competing order parameters

Coexisting fluctuations towards various ordered states are ubiquitous in strongly correlated electronic systems. In particular, measurements of underdoped cuprate high-temperature superconductors reveal evidence for short-range charge order in parallel to large superconducting fluctuations. Here we use a nonlinear sigma model to describe a system with N competing orders, and calculate its transverse thermoelectric transport coefficient in the analytically tractable limit of large N. Our results, which determine the contribution of order-parameter fluctuations to the Nernst signal, are appropriate for high temperatures in the case of finite N. They are similar to previously obtained results within a model of Gaussian superconducting fluctuations, but also indicate that the Nernst signal increases when the charge order fluctuations are suppressed.