Effect of Fermi surface destruction on transport properties in underdoped cuprates

Motivated by recent experimental measurements on the Fermi surface (FS) destruction in underdoped high-T_c cuprates, we examine its effect on the transport properties based on the Boltzmann equation approach. The effect is modeled by simply taking the density of states for electrons in the gapped regions to be zero. Within the nearly antiferromagnetic Fermi-liquid model, we calculate the temperature dependences of the dc resistivity, the inverse Hall angle, and the Hall coefficient. It is shown that the effect of the FS destruction on transport properties is sensitive to the existence and the range of the flat band near (0,±π) in the dispersion of electrons, and the anistropy of the relaxation rate along the Fermi surface. We find that the experimental data are better described by the cold spot model, i.e., the transports are determined mainly by the contribution of the electrons near the Brillouin-zone diagonals.