Transport near the Ising-nematic quantum critical point of metals in two dimensions

Sean A. Hartnoll, Raghu Mahajan, Matthias Punk, and Subir Sachdev
Phys. Rev. B 89, 155130 – Published 23 April 2014

Abstract

We consider two-dimensional metals near a Pomeranchuk instability which breaks 90 lattice rotation symmetry. Such metals realize strongly coupled non-Fermi liquids with critical fluctuations of an Ising-nematic order. At low temperatures, impurity scattering provides the dominant source of momentum relaxation and, hence, a nonzero electrical resistivity. We use the memory matrix method to compute the resistivity of this non-Fermi liquid to second order in the impurity potential, without assuming the existence of quasiparticles. Impurity scattering in the d-wave channel acts as a random “field” on the Ising-nematic order. We find contributions to the resistivity with a nearly linear temperature dependence, along with more singular terms; the most singular is the random-field contribution which diverges in the limit of zero temperature.

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  • Received 4 February 2014

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevB.89.155130

©2014 American Physical Society

Authors & Affiliations

Sean A. Hartnoll1, Raghu Mahajan1, Matthias Punk2,3, and Subir Sachdev4

  • 1Department of Physics, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305-4060, USA
  • 2Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Innsbruck, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria
  • 3Institute for Quantum Optics and Quantum Information, Austrian Academy of Sciences, 6020 Innsbruck, Austria
  • 4Department of Physics, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138, USA

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Vol. 89, Iss. 15 — 15 April 2014

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