Extremely slow Drude relaxation of correlated electrons

Marc Scheffler (), Martin Dressel, Martin Jourdan and Hermann Adrian
Additional contact information
Marc Scheffler: Universität Stuttgart
Martin Dressel: Universität Stuttgart
Martin Jourdan: Universität Mainz
Hermann Adrian: Universität Mainz

Nature, 2005, vol. 438, issue 7071, 1135-1137

Abstract: Abstract The electrical conduction of metals is governed by how freely mobile electrons can move throughout the material. This movement is hampered by scattering with other electrons, as well as with impurities or thermal excitations (phonons). Experimentally, the scattering processes of single electrons are not observed, but rather the overall response of all mobile charge carriers within a sample. The ensemble dynamics can be described by the relaxation rates, which express how fast the system approaches equilibrium after an external perturbation1,2,3. Here we measure the frequency-dependent microwave conductivity of the heavy-fermion metal UPd2Al3 (ref. 4), finding that it is accurately described by the prediction for a single relaxation rate (the so-called Drude response5). This is notable, as UPd2Al3 has strong interactions among the electrons4 that might be expected to lead to more complex behaviour. Furthermore, the relaxation rate of just a few gigahertz is extremely low—this is several orders of magnitude below those of conventional metals (which are typically around 10 THz), and at least one order of magnitude lower than previous estimates for comparable metals. These observations are directly related to the high effective mass of the charge carriers in this material and reveal the dynamics of interacting electrons.

Date: 2005
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nature.com/articles/nature04232 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nat:nature:v:438:y:2005:i:7071:d:10.1038_nature04232

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.nature.com/

DOI: 10.1038/nature04232

Access Statistics for this article

Nature is currently edited by Magdalena Skipper

More articles in Nature from Nature
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().