Non-Fermi liquid transport phenomena in SrIrO3 thin films: Role of disorder in a nematic phase

Recently, non-Fermi liquid transport phenomena have been found in SrIrO3 thin films on various substrates: Increasing the lattice mismatch between SrIrO3 thin films and substrates, the exponent $\alpha $ of electrical resistivity $\Delta \rho \sim $T$^{\mathrm{\alpha }}$ shows the variation from$_{\mathrm{\thinspace }}\alpha =$4/5, $\alpha =$1, to $\alpha =$3/2. Such experiments confirmed that these thin films lie away from a magnetic quantum critical point. On the other hand, we suggest that the presence of strong spin orbit coupling may give rise to an electron nematic phase. As a result of combined effects between quantum criticality of electron nematicity and nonmagnetic quenched disorders, we suspect that the continuous evolution of the power-law exponent may be involved with quantum Griffiths effects. Performing the renormalization group analysis, we discuss a possible origin of this non-Fermi liquid physics.