  About a half of the Fermi surface in rare-earth tritellurides RT e3 becomes
gapped below the transition to a charge-density-wave (CDW) state, as revealed
by ARPES data. However, the observed jump in resistivity during the CDW
transition is less than 20%. Previously this phenomenon was explained by
hypothesizing a very slow evolution of CDW energy gap below transition
temperature in RTe3 compounds, which contradicts the X-ray measurements. Here
we show that this weak change in resistivity can be explained in the framework
of standard mean-field temperature dependence of the CDW energy gap in
agreement with X-ray data. The change of resistivity caused by CDW is weak
because the decrease in conducting electron density at the Fermi level is
almost compensated by the decrease in their scattering rate. We calculate
resistivity in RTe3 compounds using the Boltzmann transport equation and the
mean-field description of the CDW state, and obtain a good agreement with
experimental data.
