Incoherent conductivity of holographic charge density waves

Abstract

The DC resistivity of charge density waves weakly-pinned by disorder is controlled by diffusive, incoherent processes rather than slow momentum relaxation. The corresponding incoherent conductivity can be computed in the limit of zero disorder. We compute this transport coefficient in holographic spatially modulated breaking translations spontaneously. As a by-product of our analysis, we clarify how the boundary heat current is obtained from a conserved bulk current, defined as a suitable generalization of the Iyer-Wald Noether current of the appropriate Killing vector.