Nonlocal optical responses of ultrapure metals in the hydrodynamic regime

Abstract

Our conventional understanding of optical responses in metals has been based on the Drude theory. In recent years, however, it has become possible to prepare ultrapure metallic samples where the electron-electron scattering becomes the most dominant process governing transport and thus the Drude theory, where momentum-relaxing scatterings such as electron-impurity scattering are assumed to be dominant, is no longer valid. This regime is called the hydrodynamic regime and described by an emergent hydrodynamic theory. Here, we develop a basic framework of optical responses in the hydrodynamic regime. Based on the hydrodynamic equation, we reveal the existence of a ``hydrodynamic mode'' resulting from the viscosity effect and compute the reflectance and the transmittance in three-dimensional electron fluids. Our theory also describes how to probe the hydrodynamic effects and measure the viscosity through simple optical techniques.