On non-local electrical transport in anisotropic metals

We discuss various aspects of nonlocal electrical transport in anisotropic metals. For a metal with circular Fermi surface, the scattering rates entering the local conductivity and viscosity tensors are well-defined, corresponding to eigenfrequencies of the linearized collision operator. For anisotropic metals, we provide generalized formulas for these scattering rates and use a variational approximation to show how they relate to microscopic transition probabilities. We develop a simple model of a collision operator for a metal of arbitrary Fermi surface with finite number of quasi-conserved quantities, and derive expressions for the wavevector-dependent conductivity σ(q) and the spatially-varying conductivity σ(x) for a long, narrow channel. We apply this to the case of different rates for momentum-conserving and momentum-relaxing scattering, deriving closed-form expressions for σ(q) and σ(x) — beyond generalizing from circular to arbitrary Fermi surface geometry, this represents an improvement over existing methods which solve the relevant differential equation numerically rather than in closed form. For the specific case of a diamond Fermi surface, we show that, if transport signatures were interpreted via a model for a circular Fermi surface, the diagnosis of the underlying transport regime would differ based on experimental orientation and based on whether σ(q) or σ(x) was considered. Finally, we discuss the bulk conductivity. While the common lore is that “momentum”-conserving scattering does not affect bulk resistivity, we show that crystal momentum-conserving scattering — such as normal electron-electron scattering — can affect the bulk resistivity for an anisotropic Fermi surface. We derive a simple formula for this contribution.