Interplay of disorder and spin fluctuations in the resistivity near a quantum critical point

1998/10/31 by A. Rosch · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #cond-mat.str-el

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.82.4280

published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 82, 4280 (1999) · 4 pages, 4 eps figures, published version, only small changes

arxiv created 1999/05/14 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30

Abstract

The resistivity in metals near an antiferromagnetic quantum critical point (QCP) is strongly affected by small amounts of disorder. In a quasi-classical treatment, we show that an interplay of strongly anisotropic scattering due to spin fluctuations and isotropic impurity scattering leads to a large regime where the resistivity varies as T^alpha, with an anomalous exponent, alpha, 1 <= alpha <= 1.5, depending on the amount of disorder. I argue that this mechanism explains in some detail the anomalous temperature dependence of the resistivity observed in CePd₂Si₂, CeNi₂Ge₂ and CeIn₃ near the QCP.

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