A violation of the Wiedemann-Franz law in a metal can be quantified by comparing the Lorentz ratio, L=κρ/T, where κ is the thermal conductivity and ρ is the electrical resistivity, with the universal Sommerfeld constant, L0=(π2/3)(kB/e)2. We obtain the Lorentz ratio of a clean compensated metal with intercarrier interaction as the dominant scattering mechanism by solving exactly the system of coupled integral Boltzmann equations. The Lorentz ratio is shown to assume a particular simple form in the forward-scattering limit: L/L0=Θ2/2, where Θ is the scattering angle. In this limit, L/L0 can be arbitrarily small. We also show how the same result can be obtained without the benefit of an exact solution. We discuss how a strong downward violation of the Wiedemann-Franz law in a type-II Weyl semimetal WP2 can be explained within our model.
@article{arxiv.1810.01463,
title = {Lorentz ratio of a compensated metal},
author = {Songci Li and Dmitrii L. Maslov},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1810.01463},
year = {2018}
}