  Certain classes of strongly correlated systems promise high thermopower
efficiency, but a full understanding of correlation effects on the Seebeck
coefficient is lacking. This is partly due to limitations of Boltzmann-type
approaches. One needs a formula for the thermopower that allows separate
investigations of the kinetic and potential energy contributions to the
evolution with temperature and doping of the thermopower. Here we address this
issue by deriving for Hubbard-like interactions a formula for the thermopower
that separates the potential from the kinetic energy contribution and
facilitates a better understanding of correlation effects on the Seebeck
coefficient. As an example, the thermopower of the one-band Hubbard model is
calculated from dynamical mean-field. For interactions in both the intermediate
and strong correlation limit, the contributions from kinetic and potential
energy nearly cancel.
