Damping effects and the metal-insulator transition in the two-dimensional electron gas

The damping of single-particle degrees of freedom in strongly correlated two-dimensional Fermi systems is analyzed. Suppression of the scattering amplitude due to the damping effects is shown to play a key role in preserving the validity of the Landau–Migdal quasiparticle picture in a region of a phase transition, associated with the divergence of the quasiparticle effective mass. The results of the analysis are applied to elucidate the behavior of the conductivity $\sigma(T)$ of the two-dimensional dilute electron gas in the density region where it undergoes a metal-insulator transition.