RENORMALIZATION OF THE DRUDE CONDUCTIVITY BY THE ELECTRON-PHONON INTERACTIONS

It is commonly believed that the Drude conductivity is not renormalize d by many-body interactions. To the contrary, we show that for impure metals the Drude conductivity is decreased by a temperature-dependent factor proportional to the electron-phonon coupling lambda. We demonst rate this effect by both the linear response and the quantum transport approaches. This effect, while comparable to the bare Drude conductiv ity, will be masked by the large temperature dependence of electron-ph onon scattering. We expect such many-body corrections to other transpo rt coefficients.