  We theoretically investigate the possibility to use thermolectric
measurements to detect Majorana bound states and to investigate their coupling
to a dissipative environment. The particle-hole symmetry of Majorana states
would normally lead to a vanishing Seebeck coefficient, i.e., a vanishing
open-circuit voltage resulting from a temperature gradient. We discuss how
coupling to a quantum dot with a gate-controlled energy level breaks
particle-hole symmetry in a tunable manner. The resulting gate-dependent
Seebeck coefficient provides a new way to evidence the existence of Majorana
states, which can be combined with conventional tunnel spectroscopy in the same
setup. Furthermore, the thermoelectric properties rely on the ability of the
quantum dot-Majorana system to sense the temperature of the bulk superconductor
and can be used to extract information about the dissipative decay of Majorana
states, which is crucial for quantum information applications.
