The Wiedemann-Franz law in doped Mott insulators without quasiparticles

Abstract

Many metallic quantum materials display anomalous transport phenomena that defy a Fermi liquid description. Here, we use numerical methods to calculate thermal and charge transport in the doped Hubbard model and observe a cross-over separating high- and low-temperature behaviors. Distinct from the behavior at high temperatures, the Lorenz number $L$ becomes weakly doping dependent and less sensitive to parameters at low temperatures. At the lowest numerically accessible temperatures, $L$ roughly approaches the Wiedemann-Franz constant $L_0$, even in a doped Mott insulator that lacks well-defined quasiparticles. Decomposing the energy current operator indicates a compensation between kinetic and potential contributions, which may help to clarify the interpretation of transport experiments beyond Boltzmann theory in strongly correlated metals.