Despite the enormous interest in quantum spin liquids, their experimental existence still awaits broad consensus. In particular, quenched disorder may turn a specific system into a spin glass and possibly preclude the formation of a quantum spin liqu
id. Here, we demonstrate that the glass transition among geometrically frustrated magnets, a materials class in which spin liquids are expected, differs qualitatively from conventional spin glass. Whereas conventional systems have a glass temperature that increases with increasing disorder, geometrically frustrated systems have a glass temperature that increases with decreasing disorder, approaching, in the clean limit, a finite value. This behaviour implies the existence of a hidden energy scale (far smaller than the Weiss constant) which is independent of disorder and drives the glass transition in the presence of disorder. Motivated by these observations, we propose a scenario in which the interplay of interactions and entropy in the disorder-free system yields a temperature-dependent magnetic permeability with a crossover temperature that determines the hidden energy scale. The relevance of this scale for quantum spin liquids is discussed.
Internodal dynamics of quasiparticles in Weyl semimetals manifest themselves in hydrodynamic, transport and thermodynamic phenomena and are essential for potential valleytronic applications of these systems. In an external magnetic field, coherent qu
asiparticle tunnelling between the nodes modifies the quasiparticle dispersion and, in particular, opens gaps in the dispersion of quasiparticles at the zeroth Landau level. We study magnetotransport in a Weyl semimetal taking into account mechanisms of quasiparticle scattering both affected by such gaps and independent of them. We compute the longitudal resistivity of a disordered Weyl semimetal with two nodes in a strong magnetic field microscopically and demonstrate that in a broad range of magnetic fields it has a strong angular dependence $rho(eta)propto C_1+C_2 cos^2eta$, where $eta$ is the angle between the field and the separation between the nodes in momentum space. The first term is determined by the coherent internodal tunnelling and is important only at angles $eta$ close to $pi/2$. This contribution depends exponentially on the magnetic field, $propto expleft(-B_0/Bright)$. The second term is weakly dependent on the magnetic field for realistic concentrations of the impurities in a broad interval of fields.
Nodal semimetals (e.g. Dirac, Weyl and nodal-line semimetals, graphene, etc.) and systems of pinned particles with power-law interactions (trapped ultracold ions, nitrogen defects in diamonds, spins in solids, etc.) are presently at the centre of att
ention of large communities of researchers working in condensed-matter and atomic, molecular and optical physics. Although seemingly unrelated, both classes of systems are abundant with novel fundamental thermodynamic and transport phenomena. In this paper, we demonstrate that low-energy field theories of quasiparticles in semimetals may be mapped exactly onto those of pinned particles with excitations which exhibit power-law hopping. The duality between the two classes of systems, which we establish, allows one to describe the transport and thermodynamics of each class of systems using the results established for the other class. In particular, using the duality mapping, we establish the existence of a novel class of disorder-driven transitions in systems with the power-law hopping $propto1/r^gamma$ of excitations with $d/2<gamma<d$, different from the conventional Anderson-localisation transition. Non-Anderson disorder-driven transitions have been studied broadly for nodal semimetals, but have been unknown, to our knowledge, for systems with long-range hopping (interactions) with $gamma<d$.
We demonstrate that a weakly disordered metal with short-range interactions exhibits a transition in the quantum chaotic dynamics when changing the temperature or the interaction strength. For weak interactions, the system displays exponential growth
of the out-of-time-ordered correlator (OTOC) of the current operator. The Lyapunov exponent of this growth is temperature-independent in the limit of vanishing interaction. With increasing the temperature or the interaction strength, the system undergoes a transition to a non-chaotic behaviour, for which the exponential growth of the OTOC is absent. We conjecture that the transition manifests itself in the quasiparticle energy-level statistics and also discuss ways of its explicit observation in cold-atom setups.
We study out-of-time order correlators (OTOCs) of the form $langlehat A(t)hat B(0)hat C(t)hat D(0)rangle$ for a quantum system weakly coupled to a dissipative environment. Such an open system may serve as a model of, e.g., a small region in a disorde
red interacting medium coupled to the rest of this medium considered as an environment. We demonstrate that for a system with discrete energy levels the OTOC saturates exponentially $propto sum a_i e^{-t/tau_i}+const$ to a constant value at $trightarrowinfty$, in contrast with quantum-chaotic systems which exhibit exponential growth of OTOCs. Focussing on the case of a two-level system, we calculate microscopically the decay times $tau_i$ and the value of the saturation constant. Because some OTOCs are immune to dephasing processes and some are not, such correlators may decay on two sets of parametrically different time scales related to inelastic transitions between the system levels and to pure dephasing processes, respectively. In the case of a classical environment, the evolution of the OTOC can be mapped onto the evolution of the density matrix of two systems coupled to the same dissipative environment.
It is commonly believed that a non-interacting disordered electronic system can undergo only the Anderson metal-insulator transition. It has been suggested, however, that a broad class of systems can display disorder-driven transitions distinct from
Anderson localisation that have manifestations in the disorder-averaged density of states, conductivity and other observables. Such transitions have received particular attention in the context of recently discovered 3D Weyl and Dirac materials but have also been predicted in cold-atom systems with long-range interactions, quantum kicked rotors and all sufficiently high-dimensional systems. Moreover, such systems exhibit unconventional behaviour of Lifshitz tails, energy-level statistics and ballistic-transport properties. Here we review recent progress and the status of results on non-Anderson disorder-driven transitions and related phenomena.
Systems with the power-law quasiparticle dispersion $epsilon_{bf k}propto k^alpha$ exhibit non-Anderson disorder-driven transitions in dimensions $d>2alpha$, as exemplified by Weyl semimetals, 1D and 2D arrays of ultracold ions with long-range intera
ctions, quantum kicked rotors and semiconductor models in high dimensions. We study the wavefunction structure in such systems and demonstrate that at these transitions they exhibit fractal behaviour with an infinite set of multifractal exponents. The multifractality persists even when the wavefunction localisation is forbidden by symmetry or topology and occurs as a result of elastic scattering between all momentum states in the band on length scales shorter than the mean free path. We calculate explicitly the multifractal spectra in semiconductors and Weyl semimetals using one-loop and two-loop renormalisation-group approaches slightly above the marginal dimension $d=2alpha$.
Disordered non-interacting systems in sufficiently high dimensions have been predicted to display a non-Anderson disorder-driven transition that manifests itself in the critical behaviour of the density of states and other physical observables. Recen
tly the critical properties of this transition have been extensively studied for the specific case of Weyl semimetals by means of numerical and renormalisation-group approaches. Despite this, the values of the critical exponents at such a transition in a Weyl semimetal are currently under debate. We present an independent calculation of the critical exponents using a two-loop renormalisation-group approach for Weyl fermions in $2-varepsilon$ dimensions and resolve controversies currently existing in the literature.
