Frictional force on a drifting charge-density wave

Abstract

We study the effects of impurity scattering on the charge-density-wave (CDW) drift velocity and the electron drift velocity for a three-dimensional system containing an incommensurate unpinned CDW. For the case of isotropic scattering by impurities, we find that the steady-state CDW drift velocity is about 9% of the electron steady-state drift velocity in the limit $\frac{G}{{E}_{F}}\ensuremath{\ll}1$, where $G$ is the CDW energy gap and ${E}_{F}$ is the Fermi energy. For $\frac{G}{{E}_{F}}=0.4$, the steady-state CDW drift velocity is about 22% of the steady-state electron drift velocity.