We examine the influence of collective excitations on the transport
properties (resistivity, magneto- optical conductivity) for semimetals,
focusing on the case of bismuth. We show, using an RPA approximation, that the
properties of the system are drastically affected by the presence of an
acoustic plasmon mode, consequence of the presence of two types of carriers
(electrons and holes) in this system. We found a crossover temperature T*
separating two different regimes of transport. At high temperatures T > T* we
show that Baber scattering explains quantitatively the DC resistivity
experiments, while at low temperatures T < T* interactions of the carriers with
this collective mode lead to a T^5 behavior of the resistivity. We examine
other consequences of the presence of this mode, and in particular predict a
two plasmon edge feature in the magneto-optical conductivity. We compare our
results with the experimental findings on bismuth. We discuss the limitations
and extensions of our results beyond the RPA approximation, and examine the
case of other semimetals such as graphite or 1T-TiSe_2