Enhanced Impurity Scattering due to Quantum Critical Fluctuations

Abstract

It is shown on the basis of the lowest order perturbation expansion with respect to critical fluctuations that the critical fluctuations give rise to an enhancement of the potential scattering of non-magnetic impurities. This qualitatively accounts for the enhancement of the resistivity due to impurities which has been observed in variety of systems near the quantum critical point, while the higher order processes happen to give much larger enhancement as seen from the Ward identity arguments. The cases with dynamical critical exponent $z$=2 and $z$=3 are discussed explicitly.Comment: Submitted to J. Phys. Soc. Jpn. on 27 September, 200