Charge transport in holography with momentum dissipation

Abstract

In this work, we examine how charge is transported in a theory where momentum is relaxed by spatially dependent, massless scalars. We analyze the possible IR phases in terms of various scaling exponents and the (ir)relevance of operators in the IR effective holographic theory with a dilaton. We compute the (finite) resistivity and encounter broad families of (in)coherent metals and insulators, characterized by universal scaling behaviour. The optical conductivity at zero temperature and low frequencies exhibits power tails which can violate scaling symmetries, due to the running of the dilaton. At low temperatures, our model captures features of random-field disorder.