Optical and Hall conductivities of a thermally disordered two-dimensional spin-density wave: two-particle response in the pseudogap regime of electron-doped high-$T_c$ superconductors

We calculate the longitudinal (${\sigma }_{xx}$) and Hall (${\sigma }_{xy}$) optical conductivities for two-dimensional metals with thermally disordered antiferromagnetism using a generalization of an approximation introduced by Lee, Rice and Anderson for the self energy. The conductivities are calculated from the Kubo formula, with current vertex function treated in a conserving approximation satisfying the Ward identity. In order to obtain a finite DC limit, we introduce phenomenologically impurity scattering, with relaxation time $\tau$. ${\sigma }_{xx}(\mathrm{\Omega })$ satisfies the $f$-sum rule. For the infinitely peaked spin correlation function, $\chi($\mathbf{q}$)\propto \delta($\mathbf{q}$-$\mathbf{Q}$)$, we recover the expressions for the conductivities in the mean-field theory of the ordered state. When the spin correlation length $\xi$ is large but finite, both ${\sigma }_{xx}$ and ${\sigma }_{xy}$ show behaviors characteristic of the state with long-range order. The calculation runs into difficulty for $\mathrm{\Omega }\lesssim 1\mathrm{/}\tau$. The difficulties are traced to an inaccurate treatment of the very low energy density of states within the Lee-Rice-Anderson approximation. The results for ${\sigma }_{xx}(\mathrm{\Omega })$ and ${\sigma }_{xy}(\mathrm{\Omega })$ are qualitatively consistent with data on electron-doped cuprates when $\mathrm{\Omega }>1\mathrm{/}\tau$.