Conductivity of Layered Crystals

Abstract

We show that the resistive anisotropy of an anisotropic medium is determined by the ratio of the phase coherence lengths. In layered crystals in which the interlayer transport is incoherent, the out-of-plane phase coherence length is fixed and temperature independent. This leads to a temperature dependent resistive anisotropy and to the coexistence of metallic in-plane and non-metallic out-of-plane conductivities. Our approach provides a description of the c-axis conductivity in the highly nonclassical regime, characteristic of layered cuprates.