Controlled calculation of the thermal conductivity for a spinon Fermi surface coupled to a [formula omitted] gauge field

Abstract

Motivated by recent transport measurements on the candidate spin-liquid phase of the organic triangular lattice insulator EtMe3Sb[Pd(dmit)2]2, we perform a controlled calculation of the thermal conductivity at intermediate temperatures in a spin liquid system where a spinon Fermi surface is coupled to a U(1) gauge field. The present computation builds upon the double expansion approach developed by Mross et al. (2010) for small ϵ=zb−2 (where zb is the dynamical critical exponent of the gauge field) and large number of fermionic species N. Using the so-called memory matrix formalism that most crucially does not assume the existence of well-defined quasiparticles at low energies in the system, we calculate the temperature dependence of the thermal conductivity κ of this model due to non-critical Umklapp scattering of the spinons for a finite N and small ϵ. Then we discuss the physical implications of such theoretical result in connection with the experimental data available in the literature.