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arXiv:1910.10153

From eigenstate thermalization to hydrodynamic transport in correlated metals

Yochai Werman, Shubhayu Chatterjee, Ehud Altman

Published Oct 22, 2019• 0 citations
arXivHTMLPDF

Abstract

We present a new framework for computing low frequency transport properties of strongly correlated, ergodic systems. Our main assumption is that, when a thermalizing diffusive system is driven at frequency $ω$, domains of size $ξ\sim\sqrt{D/ω}$ can be considered as internally thermal, but weakly coupled with each other. We calculate the transport coefficients to lowest order in the coupling, assuming incoherent transport between such domains. Our framework naturally captures the sub-leading non analytic corrections to the transport coefficients, known as hydrodynamic long time tails. In addition, it allows us to obtain a generalized relation between charge and thermal transport coefficients, in the spirit of the Wiedemann-Franz law. We verify our results, which satisfy several non-trivial consistency checks, via exact diagonalization studies on the one-dimensional extended Fermi-Hubbard model.

DOI
10.48550/arxiv.1910.10153

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We present a new framework for computing low frequency transport properties of strongly correlated, ergodic systems. Our main assumption is that, when a thermalizing diffusive system is driven at frequency ωωω, domains of size ξ∼D/ωξ\sim\sqrt{D/ω}ξ∼D/ω​ can be considered as internally thermal, but weakly coupled with each other. We calculate the transport coefficients to lowest order in the coupling, assuming incoherent transport between such domains. Our framework naturally captures the sub-leading non analytic corrections to the transport coefficients, known as hydrodynamic long time tails. In addition, it allows us to obtain a generalized relation between charge and thermal transport coefficients, in the spirit of the Wiedemann-Franz law. We verify our results, which satisfy several non-trivial consistency checks, via exact diagonalization studies on the one-dimensional extended Fermi-Hubbard model.
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We revisit a phenomenological model of fermions coupled to fluctuating bosons that emerges from finite-momentum particle-particle pairs for describing the strange metal phase in the cuprates. The incoherent bosons dominate the transport properties for the resistivity and optical conductivity in the non-Fermi-liquid phase. Within the Kubo formalism, the resistivity is approximately linear in temperature with a Drude form for the optical conductivity, such that the Drude lifetime is inversely proportional to the temperature. Here, we compute the transport properties of such bosons within the memory-matrix approach that successfully captures the hydrodynamic regime. This technique emerges as the appropriate framework for describing the transport coefficients of the strange metal phase. Our analysis confirms the TTT-linear resistivity due to the umklapp scattering that we obtained for this effective model. Finally, we provide new predictions regarding the variation of the thermal conductivity with temperature and examine the validity of the Wiedemann-Franz law.