Theory of universal incoherent metallic transport

By S. Hartnoll. Nature Physics, 2014

463 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The anomalous transport of important materials such as high-temperature superconductors and other ‘bad metals’ is not well understood theoretically. In an incoherent metal, transport is controlled by the collective diffusion of energy and charge rather than by quasiparticle or momentum relaxation. Here, we explore the possibility of a universal bound D ≳ ℏνF2/(kBT) on the underlying diffusion constants in an incoherent metal. Such a bound is loosely motivated by results from holographic duality, the uncertainty principle and measurements of diffusion in strongly interacting non-metallic systems. Metals close to saturating this bound are shown to have a linear-in-temperature resistivity with an underlying dissipative timescale matching that recently deduced from experimental data on a wide range of metals. This bound may therefore be responsible for the ubiquitous appearance of high-temperature regimes in metals with T-linear resistivity. To establish this calls for direct measurements of diffusive processes and of charge susceptibilities in incoherent metals. Linear resistivity across many strongly correlated materials at high temperatures has no satisfactory explanation. A universal framework of incoherent metallic transport in which quantities are bounded could be the way forward.

Subfields: Atomic and Molecular Physics, and Optics, Condensed Matter Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/69effc17dd88caca8b6e22d115251ca2b7c402dc

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Citations in the corpus

Holographic Quantum Matter (2016, methodology): “In this limit, the only conserved quantities are charge and energy [336].”
Planckian dissipation, minimal viscosity and the transport in cuprate strange metals (2018, methodology): “Among others, this addresses the strong disorder limit [21] and very general scaling considerations that even get beyond holography [60].”
Universal diffusion in incoherent black holes (2016, methodology): “These holographic models therefore provide concrete examples of how universal transport properties governed by τ ∼ ~/kBT could emerge in an incoherent metal [4, 6].”
Momentum dissipation and effective theories of coherent and incoherent transport (2014, background): “nt, and then to a valley (gure2). The longitudinal heat transport is always diusive in this regime, as momentum is never approximately conserved. Although this is in agreement with the statement of [27] that incoherent transport is mediated by diusive processes, we emphasise that long distance trans”
Dissecting holographic conductivities (2015, background): “This is an example of incoherent transport [6] and is the case for the electric conductivity in charge conjugation symmetric states, for example.”
Solid holography and massive gravity (2015, background): “After this quite generic review of the physical distinctions between MG phases, let us introduce a bit more the specifics of the holographic application (for some recent developments concerning the importance of the translation breaking sectors see [1–4, 22– 27] and references therein).”