INTERACTION EFFECTS AND PHASE RELAXATION IN DISORDERED SYSTEMS

Abstract This paper is intended to demonstrate that there is no need to revise the existing theory of the transport properties of disordered conductors in the so-called weak localization regime. In particular, we demonstrate explicitly that recent attempts to justify theoretically that the dephasing rate (extracted from the magnetoresistance) remains finite at zero temperature are based on a profoundly incorrect calculation. This demonstration is based on a straightforward evaluation of the effect of the electron-electron interaction on the weak localization correction to the conductivity of disordered metals. Using well controlled perturbation theory with the inverse conductance g as the small parameter, we show that this effect consists of two contributions. The first contribution comes from the processes with energy transfer smaller than the temperature, and is responsible for setting the energy scale for the magnetoresistance. The second contribution originates from the virtual processes with energy t...