Quantum Interference of Hydrodynamic Modes in a Dirty Marginal Fermi Liquid

TL;DR

This paper investigates quantum interference effects on electrical transport in a disordered two-dimensional non-Fermi liquid, revealing a dominant linear-temperature resistivity due to quantum corrections in a strongly dissipative regime.

Contribution

It introduces a novel analysis of quantum interference in a disordered non-Fermi liquid with SYK-like features, deriving a nonlinear sigma model and demonstrating persistent quantum interference effects.

Findings

Quantum correction leads to linear-T resistivity at low temperatures.

Disorder induces a marginal Fermi liquid self-energy for fermions.

Quantum interference persists despite strong dissipation.

Abstract

We study the electrical transport of a two-dimensional non-Fermi liquid with disorder, and we determine the first quantum correction to the semiclassical dc conductivity due to quantum interference. We consider a system with $N$ flavors of fermions coupled to SU($N$) critical matrix bosons. Motivated by the SYK model, we employ the bilocal field formalism and derive a set of finite-temperature saddle-point equations governing the fermionic and bosonic self-energies in the large-$N$ limit. Interestingly, disorder smearing induces a marginal Fermi liquid (MFL) self-energy for the fermions. We next consider fluctuations around the saddle points and derive a MFL-Finkel'stein nonlinear sigma model. We find that the Altshuler-Aronov quantum conductance correction gives linear-$T$ resistivity that can dominate over the Drude result at low temperature. The strong temperature dependence of the quantum correction arises due to rapid relaxation of the mediating quantum-critical bosons. We verify that our calculations explicitly satisfy the Ward identity at the semiclassical and quantum levels. Our results establish that quantum interference persists in two-particle hydrodynamic modes, even when quasiparticles are subject to strong (Planckian) dissipation.