Unconventional scaling of resistivity in two-dimensional Fermi liquids

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that unconventional resistivity scaling in two-dimensional Fermi liquids can result from specific Fermi surface geometries affecting umklapp scattering, challenging the typical non-Fermi-liquid interpretation.

Contribution

It reveals that geometric conditions of the Fermi surface can cause deviations from Fermi-liquid behavior in resistivity, using numerical simulations of a 2D electron system.

Findings

Unconventional resistivity scaling can arise from Fermi surface geometry.

Deviations from Fermi-liquid theory occur even at ultra-low temperatures.

Umklapp processes are crucial for momentum relaxation in these systems.

Abstract

We study the temperature dependence of the electrical resistivity of interacting two-dimensional metallic systems. We perform a numerical simulation of the nonequilibrium state based on semiclassical Boltzmann transport theory. Through our simulation, we demonstrate that deviations from the predictions of standard Fermi-liquid theory can arise due to the special scattering geometry of umklapp processes, in special cases even in the ultra-low-temperature limit. Umklapp scattering is required to relax the total momentum of the quasiparticle distribution function. We investigate the transport properties of a two-dimensional system of quasiparticles with repulsive on-site interactions and nonmagnetic impurity scattering on a square lattice with a single-orbital tight-binding model of the dispersion. We demonstrate that unconventional scaling properties of the electrical resistivity, which are often interpreted as indication of a non-Fermi-liquid state, can arise due to special geometric conditions of the Fermi surface. The appearance of robust deviations from the predictions of Fermi-liquid theory within our simple model presents a novel viewpoint in order to interpret unconventional transport properties in electron-electron scattering dominated metallic systems.