Conductivity Enhancement in a Diffusive Fermi Liquid due to Bose-Einstein Condensation of Magnons

We theoretically study the conductivity of a disordered 2D metal when it is coupled to ferromagnetic magnons with a quadratic spectrum and a gap A. In the diffusive limit, a combination of disorder and magnon-mediated electron interaction leads to a sharp metallic correction to the Drude conductivity as the magnons approach criticality, i.e., A -> 0. The correction is nonsingular and is distinctively weaker than, for example, the log-squared correction obtained when disordered electrons couple to diffusive spin fluctuations near a Hertz-Millis transition. The possibility of verifying this prediction in an S = 1/2 easy -plane ferromagnetic insulator K2CuF4 under an external magnetic field is proposed. Our results show that the onset of a magnon Bose-Einstein condensation in an insulator can be detected via electrical transport measurements on the proximate metal.

Automated summary

We theoretically study the conductivity of a disordered 2D metal coupled to ferromagnetic magnons with a quadratic spectrum. In the diffusive limit, the combination of disorder and magnon-mediated electron interaction leads to a sharp metallic correction to the Drude conductivity as the magnons approach criticality. This correction is weaker than the log-squared correction obtained when disordered electrons couple to diffusive spin fluctuations near a Hertz-Millis transition. It is proposed to verify this prediction in the ferromagnetic insulator K2CuF4 under an external magnetic field through electrical transport measurements on the proximate metal.