No Arabic abstract
Chiral edge modes of topological insulators and Hall states exhibit non-trivial behavior of conductance in the presence of impurities or additional channels. We will present a simple formula for the conductance through a chiral edge mode coupled to a disordered bulk. For a given coupling matrix between the chiral mode and bulk modes, and a Green function matrix of bulk modes in real space, the renormalized Green function of the chiral mode is expressed in closed form as a ratio of determinants. We demonstrate the usage of the formula in two systems: i) a 1d wire with random onsite impurity potentials for which we found the disorder averaging is made simpler with the formula, and ii) a quantum Hall fluid with impurities in the bulk for which the phase picked up by the chiral mode due to the scattering with the impurities can be conveniently estimated.
We investigate the scattering of elastic waves off a disordered region described by a one-dimensional random-phase sine-Gordon model. The collective pinning results in an effective static disorder potential with universal and non-Gaussian correlations, acting on propagating waves. We find signatures of the correlations in the wave transmission in a wide frequency range, which covers both the weak and strong localization regimes. Our theory elucidates the dynamics of collectively-pinned phases occurring in any natural or synthetic elastic medium. The latter one is exemplified by a one-dimensional array of Josephson junctions, for which we specify our results. The obtained results provide benchmarks for the array-enabled quantum simulations addressing the dynamics in broader and yet-unexplored domains of individual pinning and quantum Bose glass.
The conductance of a quantum wire with off-diagonal disorder that preserves a sublattice symmetry (the random hopping problem with chiral symmetry) is considered. Transport at the band center is anomalous relative to the standard problem of Anderson localization both in the diffusive and localized regimes. In the diffusive regime, there is no weak-localization correction to the conductance and universal conductance fluctuations are twice as large as in the standard cases. Exponential localization occurs only for an even number of transmission channels in which case the localization length does not depend on whether time-reversal and spin rotation symmetry are present or not. For an odd number of channels the conductance decays algebraically. Upon moving away from the band center transport characteristics undergo a crossover to those of the standard universality classes of Anderson localization. This crossover is calculated in the diffusive regime.
We present results of conductance-noise experiments on disordered films of crystalline indium oxide with lateral dimensions 2microns to 1mm. The power-spectrum of the noise has the usual 1/f form, and its magnitude increases with inverse sample-volume down to sample size of 2microns, a behavior consistent with un-correlated fluctuators. A colored second spectrum is only occasionally encountered (in samples smaller than 40microns), and the lack of systematic dependence of non-Gaussianity on sample parameters persisted down to the smallest samples studied (2microns). Moreover, it turns out that the degree of non-Gaussianity exhibits a non-trivial dependence on the bias V used in the measurements; it initially increases with V then, when the bias is deeper into the non-linear transport regime it decreases with V. We describe a model that reproduces the main observed features and argue that such a behavior arises from a non-linear effect inherent to electronic transport in a hopping system and should be observed whether or not the system is glassy.
Conduction through materials crucially depends on how ordered they are. Periodically ordered systems exhibit extended Bloch waves that generate metallic bands, whereas disorder is known to limit conduction and localize the motion of particles in a medium. In this context, quasiperiodic systems, which are neither periodic nor disordered, reveal exotic conduction properties, self-similar wavefunctions, and critical phenomena. Here, we explore the localization properties of waves in a novel family of quasiperiodic chains obtained when continuously interpolating between two paradigmatic limits: the Aubry-Andre model, famous for its metal-to-insulator transition, and the Fibonacci chain, known for its critical nature. Using both theoretical analysis and experiments on cavity-polariton devices, we discover that the Aubry-Andre model evolves into criticality through a cascade of band-selective localization/delocalization transitions that iteratively shape the self-similar critical wavefunctions of the Fibonacci chain. Our findings offer (i) a unique new insight into understanding the criticality of quasiperiodic chains, (ii) a controllable knob by which to engineer band-selective pass filters, and (iii) a versatile experimental platform with which to further study the interplay of many-body interactions and dissipation in a wide range of quasiperiodic models.
An important challenge in the field of many-body quantum dynamics is to identify non-ergodic states of matter beyond many-body localization (MBL). Strongly disordered spin chains with non-Abelian symmetry and chains of non-Abelian anyons are natural candidates, as they are incompatible with standard MBL. In such chains, real space renormalization group methods predict a partially localized, non-ergodic regime known as a quantum critical glass (a critical variant of MBL). This regime features a tree-like hierarchy of integrals of motion and symmetric eigenstates with entanglement entropy that scales as a logarithmically enhanced area law. We argue that such tentative non-ergodic states are perturbatively unstable using an analytic computation of the scaling of off-diagonal matrix elements and accessible level spacing of local perturbations. Our results indicate that strongly disordered chains with non-Abelian symmetry display either spontaneous symmetry breaking or ergodic thermal behavior at long times. We identify the relevant length and time scales for thermalization: even if such chains eventually thermalize, they can exhibit non-ergodic dynamics up to parametrically long time scales with a non-analytic dependence on disorder strength.