This brief review presents the emerging field of mesoscopic physics with cold
atoms, with an emphasis on thermal and 'thermoelectric' transport, i.e. coupled
transport of particle and entropy. We review in particular the comparison
between theoretically predited and experimentally observed thermoelectric
effects in such systems. We also show how combining well designed transport
properties and evaporative cooling leads to an equivalent of the Peltier effect
with cold atoms, which can be used as a new cooling procedure with improved
cooling power and efficiency compared to the evaporative cooling currently used
in atomic gases. This could lead to a new generation of experiments probing
strong correlation effects of ultracold fermionic atoms at low temperatures.Comment: 33 pages, 9 figures, Review. To be published in the special issue
"Mesoscopic Thermoelectric Phenomena" of C. R. Physique 17 (2016
