2021/01/18 by Andrej Pustogow, Yohei Saito, Anja Löhle +5
Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Electrical resistivity and conductivity #Mott transition #Optical conductivity #Organic and Molecular Conductors Research #Physics of Superconductivity and Magnetism #Quasiparticle #Rare-earth and actinide compounds #Scattering #Scattering rate #Superconductivity #Weak localization #cond-mat.str-el
paper · pdf · doi:10.1038/s41467-021-21741-z
published as Nature Communications 12, 1571 (2021) · Main part: 8 pages, 4 figures; Supplement: 8 pages, 11 figures
arxiv created 2021/01/18 · openalex created_date 2021/02/01 · openalex publication_date 2021/03/10 · arxiv updated 2021/03/11 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Abstract Landau suggested that the low-temperature properties of metals can be understood in terms of long-lived quasiparticles with all complex interactions included in Fermi-liquid parameters, such as the effective mass m ⋆ . Despite its wide applicability, electronic transport in bad or strange metals and unconventional superconductors is controversially discussed towards a possible collapse of the quasiparticle concept. Here we explore the electrodynamic response of correlated metals at half filling for varying correlation strength upon approaching a Mott insulator. We reveal persistent Fermi-liquid behavior with pronounced quadratic dependences of the optical scattering rate on temperature and frequency, along with a puzzling elastic contribution to relaxation. The strong increase of the resistivity beyond the Ioffe–Regel–Mott limit is accompanied by a ‘displaced Drude peak’ in the optical conductivity. Our results, supported by a theoretical model for the optical response, demonstrate the emergence of a bad metal from resilient quasiparticles that are subject to dynamical localization and dissolve near the Mott transition.