Strangely ’quiet’ current in strange metal

Maxwell Andrews and Silke Bühler-Paschen What happens when electric current flows through a "strange metal"- TU Wien (Vienna) and Rice University (Texas) show: The established picture of electrons and "quasi-electrons" collapses. At first glance, it all sounds so simple: there are electrons in a cable, and when we apply a voltage, the electrons dash from one side of the cable to the other, and an electric current flows. This picture is not entirely wrong - but it is not right either. In fact, electrons cannot move freely in a solid. Instead, there are complicated interactions between many different particles. This causes the charge transport in the material to have some inertia - as if the electrons in the material had a greater mass. This can be treated mathematically by describing the current flow through the material not with ordinary electrons, but with "quasi-electrons", which carry the same electrical charge but have a greater mass.