The physics of Anderson transitions between localized and metallic phases in disordered systems is reviewed. We focus on the character of criticality as well as on underlying symmetries and topologies that are crucial for understanding phase diagrams and the critical behavior.
We present an ultra-high-precision numerical study of the spectrum of multifractal exponents $Delta_q$ characterizing anomalous scaling of wave function moments $<|psi|^{2q}>$ at the quantum Hall transition. The result reads $Delta_q = 2q(1-q)[b_0 +
b_1(q-1/2)^2 + ...]$, with $b_0 = 0.1291pm 0.0002$ and $b_1 = 0.0029pm 0.0003$. The central finding is that the spectrum is not exactly parabolic, $b_1 e 0$. This rules out a class of theories of Wess-Zumino-Witten type proposed recently as possible conformal field theories of the quantum Hall critical point.
