Impurity induced resistivity upturns in underdoped cuprates

Abstract

Impurity induced low temperature upturns in both the ab-plane and the c-axis dc-resistivities of cuprates in the pseudogap state have been observed in experiments. We provide an explanation of this phenomenon by incorporating impurity scattering of the charge carriers within a phenomenological model proposed by Yang, Rice and Zhang. The scattering between charge carriers and the impurity atom is considered within the lowest order Born approximation. Resistivity is calculated within Kubo formula using the impurity renormalized spectral functions. Using physical parameters for cuprates, we describe qualitative features of the upturn phenomena and its doping evolution that coincides with the experimental findings. We stress that this effect is largely due to the strong electronic correlations.