Bad-Metal Relaxation Dynamics in a Fermi Lattice Gas

We report the discovery of phenomena consistent with bad-metal relaxation dynamics in the metallic regime of an optical-lattice Hubbard model. The transport lifetime induced by inter-particle scattering for a mass current of atoms excited by stimulated Raman transitions is measured, and the corresponding analog of resistivity is inferred. By exploring a range of temperature, we demonstrate incompatibility with weak-scattering theory and a key characteristic of bad metals: anomalous resistivity scaling consistent with \(T\)-linear behavior. We also observe the onset of two behaviors---incoherent transport and the approach to the Mott-Ioffe-Regel limit---associated with bad metals. The interaction and temperature scaling of resistivity are verified to be consistent with dynamic mean-field theory (DMFT) predictions of a bad metal, which is associated with the reduction of quasiparticle weight by strong interactions.