Skip to main content Skip to navigation

Physics Department News

Show all news items

Upper limit on electron scattering observed

The Planckian limit is believed to be the upper boundary on scattering of charge carriers in a conducting system, and has been attributed as the origin of the linear-in-temperature resistivity observed in several 'strange metals' in recent years. In this limit, the scattering rate is predicted to depend only on fundamental constants and the temperature. A collaborative team from the Universities of Cornell, Sherbrooke, Paris-Saclay, Texas, the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, Tallahassee and including Paul Goddard at Warwick Physics, made use of angle-dependent magnetoresistance, a technique in which electronic transport properties are monitored while rotating the sample in a large magnetic field. The team found that the results measured in a high-temperature cuprate superconductor could be readily explained with a surprisingly simple transport model including an isotropic scattering rate that is right at the predicted Planckian limit.

This work is published as "Linear-in temperature resistivity from an isotropic Planckian scattering rate" by G. Grissonnanche et al. Nature 595, 667 (2021).

Thu 29 Jul 2021, 10:51 | Tags: Research