Bad Metals from Fluctuating Density Waves
Luca V. Delacrétaz, Blaise Goutéraux, Sean A. Hartnoll, Anna Karlsson
SciPost Phys. 3, 025 (2017) · published 29 September 2017
- doi: 10.21468/SciPostPhys.3.3.025
- Submissions/Reports
Abstract
Bad metals have a large resistivity without being strongly disordered. In many bad metals the Drude peak moves away from zero frequency as the resistivity becomes large at increasing temperatures. We catalogue the position and width of the `displaced Drude peak' in the observed optical conductivity of several families of bad metals, showing that $\omega_\text{peak} \sim \Delta \omega \sim k_BT/\hbar$. This is the same quantum critical timescale that underpins the $T$-linear dc resistivity of many of these materials. We provide a unified theoretical description of the optical and dc transport properties of bad metals in terms of the hydrodynamics of short range quantum critical fluctuations of incommensurate density wave order. Within hydrodynamics, pinned translational order is essential to obtain the nonzero frequency peak.
Cited by 73
Authors / Affiliations: mappings to Contributors and Organizations
See all Organizations.- 1 Luca V. Delacrétaz,
- 1 2 3 Blaise Goutéraux,
- 1 Sean A. Hartnoll,
- 1 Anna Karlsson
- 1 Stanford University [SU]
- 2 Observatoire de Paris / Paris Observatory
- 3 Kungliga Tekniska högskolan / Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) [KTH]
- FP7 People: Marie-Curie Actions (FP7 People) (through Organization: European Commission [EC])
- Knut och Alice Wallenbergs Stiftelse / Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation
- National Science Foundation [NSF]
- Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung / Swiss National Science Foundation [SNF]
- United States Department of Energy [DOE]