Absence of Disorder-Driven Metal-Insulator Transitions in Simple Holographic Models

Abstract

We study electrical transport in a strongly coupled strange metal in two spatial dimensions at finite temperature and charge density, holographically dual to the Einstein-Maxwell theory in an asymptotically four-dimensional anti–de Sitter space spacetime, with arbitrary spatial inhomogeneity, up to mild assumptions including emergent isotropy. In condensed matter, these are candidate models for exotic strange metals without long-lived quasiparticles. We prove that the electrical conductivity is bounded from below by a universal minimal conductance: the quantum critical conductivity of a clean, charge-neutral plasma. Beyond nonperturbatively justifying mean-field approximations to disorder, our work demonstrates the practicality of new hydrodynamic insight into holographic transport.