  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 non-linear 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.
