Role of electron-electron collisions for charge and heat transport at intermediate temperatures

Abstract

Electric, thermal and thermoelectric transport in correlated electron systems probe different aspects of the many-body dynamics, and thus provide complementary information. These are well studied in the low- and high-temperature limits, while the experimentally important intermediate regime, in which elastic and inelastic scattering are both important, is less understood. To fill this gap, we provide comprehensive solutions of the Boltzmann equation in the presence of an electric field and a temperature gradient for two different cases: First, when electron-electron collisions are treated within the relaxation-time approximation while the full momentum dependence of electron-impurity scattering is included and, second, when the electron-impurity scattering is momentum-independent, but the electron-electron collisions give rise to a momentum-dependent inelastic scattering rate of the Fermi-liquid type. We find that for Fermi-liquid as well as for Coulomb interactions, both methods give the same results for the leading temperature dependence of the transport coefficients. Moreover, the inelastic relaxation rate enters the electric conductivity and the Seebeck coefficient only when the momentum dependence of the electron-impurity collisions, analytical or non-analytical, is included. Specifically, we show that inelastic processes only mildly affect the electric conductivity, but can generate a non-monotonic dependence of the Seebeck coefficient on temperature and even a change of sign. Thermal conductivity, by contrast, always depends on the inelastic scattering rate even for a constant elastic relaxation rate.