We address Coulomb drag and near-field heat transfer in a double-layer system of incoherent metals. Each layer is modeled by an array of tunnel-coupled SYK dots with random inter-layer interactions. Depending on the strength of intra-dot interactions and inter-dot tunneling, this model captures the crossover from the Fermi liquid to a strange metal phase. The absence of quasiparticles in the strange metal leads to temperature-independent drag resistivity, which is in strong contrast with the quadratic temperature dependence in the Fermi liquid regime. We show that all the parameters can be independently measured in near-field heat transfer experiments, performed in Fermi liquid and strange metal regimes.

5 pages, 3 figures + Supplemental Material