Incoherent transport in clean quantum critical metals

Abstract: In a clean quantum critical metal, and in the absence of umklapp, most d.c. conductivities are formally infinite due to momentum conservation. However, there is a particular combination of the charge and heat currents which has a finite, universal conductivity. In this paper, we describe the physics of this conductivity σ_Q in quantum critical metals obtained by charge doping a strongly interacting conformal field theory. We show that it satisfies an Einstein relation and controls the diffusivity of a conserved charge in the metal. We compute σ_Q in a class of theories with holographic gravitational duals. Finally, we show how the temperature scaling of σ_Q depends on certain critical exponents characterizing the quantum critical metal. The holographic results are found to be reproduced by the scaling analysis, with the charge density operator becoming marginal in the emergent low energy quantum critical theory.