Transport near the Ising-nematic quantum critical point of metals in two dimensions

Abstract

We consider two-dimensional metals near a Pomeranchuk instability which breaks 90∘ lattice rotation symmetry. Such metals realize strongly coupled non-Fermi liquids with critical fluctuations of an Ising-nematic order. At low temperatures, impurity scattering provides the dominant source of momentum relaxation and, hence, a nonzero electrical resistivity. We use the memory matrix method to compute the resistivity of this non-Fermi liquid to second order in the impurity potential, without assuming the existence of quasiparticles. Impurity scattering in the d-wave channel acts as a random “field” on the Ising-nematic order. We find contributions to the resistivity with a nearly linear temperature dependence, along with more singular terms; the most singular is the random-field contribution which diverges in the limit of zero temperature.