Effect of Thermal Umklapp on the Low-Temperature Electrical Resistivity

Abstract

The Klemens-Jackson theory of the low-temperature resistivity of those monovalent metals whose Fermi surface touches or nearly touches the Brillouin-zone boundary has been extended to include the presence of impurity scattering, which is described by an isotropic relaxation time. The electrical resistivity thus obtained is in the form of a slowly converging infinite series. The deviations from Matthiessen's rule which occur as a consequence of the simultaneous presence of thermally induced umklapp processes and impurity scattering are calculated. They prove to be large and have a temperature dependence that, over limited temperature intervals, could be spuriously interpreted as showing evidence of electron-electron scattering.