Strange metal transport from coupling to fluctuating spins

Abstract

Metals hosting strong electronic interactions, including high-temperature superconductors, behave in ways that do not conform to normal Fermi liquid theory. To pinpoint the microscopic origin of this strange metal behavior, here we reexamine the d.c. and frequency-dependent conductivity of the two-dimensional t-J model taking advantage of recent improvements made on the finite temperature Lanczos method, enabling numerically exact calculations at unprecedentedly low temperatures and high spectral resolution. We find that strange metallicity is pervasive in the temperature-doping phase diagram whenever anti-ferromagnetic order is suppressed, and advocate that key insights on Planckian relaxation can be gained by extending the study to the frequency and time domain. Our results indicate that Planckian behavior does not originate from the scattering properties of the current carriers, being instead rooted in the quantum statistical nature of the charge response.