Anomalous Thermal Diffusivity in Bad Metals

ORAL

Abstract

Local measurements of thermal diffusivity are used to analyze the transport of heat in the bad metallic regime of several strongly correlated materials. Thermal diffusivity was measured for several curate systems in their so-called bad metal regime. For underdoped YBCO, we find that the thermal anisotropy is comparable to reported values of the electrical resistivity anisotropy and drops sharply below the charge order transition, suggesting that both anisotropies have the same origin. For some electron-doped cuprates the inverse diffusivity is found to be proportional to temperature, again similar to the behavior of the electrical resistivity. We interpret our results through a strong electron-phonon scattering picture where both electron and lattice system saturates a quantum scattering time bound of ~h/kBT. Our results suggest that neither well-defined electron nor phonon quasiparticles might be present in these systems, and that thermal transport is carried out by a collective ”soup” of strongly coupled electrons and phonons.

*Supported by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation through the EPiQS Initiative, Grant GBMF4529, and by Department of Energy Early Career Award (SAH).

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Presenters

  • Jiecheng Zhang

    • Stanford University

Authors

  • Jiecheng Zhang

    • Stanford University

  • Eli Levenson-Falk

    • Stanford University

  • Erik Kountz

    • Stanford University

  • Brad Ramshaw

    • Cornell University
    • Los Alamos National Labs
    • National High Magnetic Field Laboratory
    • Department of Physics, Cornell University
    • Laboratory of Atomic and Solid State Physics, Cornell University
    • Los Alamos National Laboratory
    • Laboratory for Atomic and Solid state Physics, Cornell University

  • Doug Bonn

    • University of British Columbia
    • Physics and Astronomy, University of British Columbia
    • Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of British Columbia

  • Ruixing Liang

    • University of British Columbia
    • Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of British Columbia

  • Walter Hardy

    • University of British Columbia

  • Richard Greene

    • Univ of Maryland-College Park
    • Center for Nanophysics & Advanced Materials, Univ of Maryland-College Park
    • University of Maryland

  • Sean Hartnoll

    • Stanford Univ
    • Stanford University

  • Aharon Kapitulnik

    • Stanford University
    • Stanford Univ
    • Physics, Stanford Univ