Condensed Matter Physics Seminar
2 p.m., Thursday, February 10, 2005
Room 1201, Physics Building
Interaction corrections to transport in disordered metals:
quantum kinetic equation and the Wiedemann-Franz law
Gianluigi Catelani
(Columbia University)
Abstract: The Wiedemann-Franz law relating electrical and thermal
conductivities is usually regarded as a signature of Fermi-liquid theory;
however it strictly holds only when transport phenomena are determined by
elastic scattering processes whose cross section smoothly depends on the
energy. Moreover it is well known that at low temperatures singular corrections
to the electrical conductivity arise because of the electron-electron
interactions. The question I will address is whether the Wiedemann-Franz
law is still valid if one accounts for the interaction effects. I will show that
the there are deviations from this law which include but are not limited to
those due to the energy dependence of the scattering rate. In particular, a
large contribution to the violation of the Wiedemann-Franz law comes from the
energy transported by neutral bosonic excitations: these low-energy modes must
be introduced in order to obtain a local kinetic description of the interacting
disordered metal.
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Host: Chubukov
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