Non equilibrium dynamics of disordered systems : understanding the broad continuum of relevant time scales via a strong-disorder RG in configuration space
We show that an appropriate description of the non-equilibrium dynamics of disordered systems is obtained through a strong disorder renormalization procedure in {\it configuration space}, that we define for any master equation with transitions rates $W ({\cal C} \to {\cal C}')$ between configurations. The idea is to eliminate iteratively the configuration with the highest exit rate $W_{out} ({\cal C})= \sum_{{\cal C}'} W ({\cal C} \to {\cal C}')$ to obtain renormalized transition rates between the remaining configurations. The multiplicative structure of the new generated transition rates suggests that, for a very broad class of disordered systems, the distribution of renormalized exit barriers defined as $B_{out} ({\cal C}) \equiv - \ln W_{out}({\cal C})$ will become broader and broader upon iteration, so that the strong disorder renormalization procedure should become asymptotically exact at large time scales. We have checked numerically this scenario for the non-equilibrium dynamics of a directed polymer in a two dimensional random medium.
It is still under debate whether the classical Einstein relation in disordered organic semiconductors is valid. We investigated Einstein relation in disordered organic semiconductors theoretically. The results show that, the classic Einstein relation deviate dramatically with disorder and electric field, even in the case of thermal equilibrium.
The polaron to bipolaron transition in disordered media under the influence of a broadband ac electric field is suggested: ac conductivity vs. frequency measurements in disordered media with inhomogeneous disorder induce spatio-temporal fluctuations of the density of polarons yielding polaron to bipolaron transformation. The external field results in the transition, alternatively to an increasing doping level. The assertion is confirmed by performing successive complex impedance measurements in disordered media. A systematic increase of the real part of the ac conductivity in the frequency dom…
Random walks are studied on disordered cellular networks in 2-and 3-dimensional spaces with arbitrary curvature. The coefficients of the evolution equation are calculated in term of the structural properties of the cellular system. The effects of disorder and space-curvature on the diffusion phenomena are investigated. In disordered systems the mean square displacement displays an enhancement at short time and a lowering at long ones, with respect to the ordered case. The asymptotic expression for the diffusion equation on hyperbolic cellular systems relates random walk on curved lattices to h…
We report a numerical investigation of the fluctuations of the Lyapunov exponent of a two dimensional non-interacting disordered system. While the ratio of the mean to the variance of the Lyapunov exponent is not constant, as it is in one dimension, its variation is consistent with the single parameter scaling hypothesis.
We briefly review different approaches used recently to describe collective effects in the strong pinning model of disordered charge and spin density waves, in connection with the CRTBT very low temperature heat relaxation experiments.
We investigate disordered graphene with strong long-range impurities. Contrary to the common belief that delocalization should persist in such a system against any disorder, as the system is ex-pected to be equivalent to a disordered two-dimensional Dirac Fermionic system, we find that states near the Dirac points are localized for sufficiently strong disorder and the transition between the localized and delocalized states is of Kosterlitz-Thouless type. Our results show that the transition originates from bounding and unbounding of local current vortices.
The universality of the metal-insulator transition in three-dimensional disordered system is confirmed by numerical analysis of the scaling properties of the electronic wave functions. We prove that the critical exponent $ν$ and the multifractal dimensions $d_q$ are independent on the microscopic definition of the disorder and universal along the critical line which separates the metallic and the insulating regime.
Disorder plays a crucial role in many systems particularly in solid state physics. However, the disorder in a particular system can usually not be chosen or controlled. We show that the unique control available for ultracold atomic gases may be used for the production and observation of disordered quantum degenerate gases. A detailed analysis of localization effects for two possible realizations of a disordered potential is presented. In a theoretical analysis clear localization effects are observed when a superlattice is used to provide a quasiperiodic disorder. The effects of localization ar…
Force-constant and positional disorder have been introduced into diamond lattice models in an attempt to mimic the vibrational properties of a realistic amorphous silicon model. Neither type of disorder is sufficient on its own to mimic the realistic model. By comparing the spectral densities of these models, it is shown that a combination of both disorders is a better representation, but still not completely satisfactory. Topological disorder in these models was investigated by renumbering the atoms and examining the dynamical matrix graphically. The dynamical matrix of the realistic model is…
Optical scattering strength of fractal optical disordered media with varying fractal dimension is reported. The diffusion limited aggregation (DLA) technique is used to generate fractal samples in 2D and 3D, and fractal dimensions are calculated using the box-counting method. The degree of structural disorder of these samples are calculated using their light localization strength, using the inverse participation ratio (IPR) analyses of the optical eigenfunctions. Results show non-monotonous behavior of the disorder-induced scattering strength with the fractal dimension, attributed to the compe…
We consider a semiclassical formulation for the density of states (DOS) of disordered systems in any dimension. We show that this formulation becomes very accurate when the correlation length of the disorder potential is large. The disorder potential does not need to be smooth and is not limited to the perturbative regime, where the disorder is small. The DOS is expressed in terms of a convolution of the disorder distribution function and the non-disordered DOS. We apply this formalism to evaluate the broadening of Landau levels and to calculate the specific heat in disordered systems.
We investigate the effect of spatially correlated disorder on the Anderson transition of phonons in three dimensions using a Greens function based approach, namely, the typical medium dynamical cluster approximation (TMDCA), in mass-disordered systems. We numerically demonstrate that correlated disorder with pairwise correlations mitigates the localization of the vibrational modes. A correlation driven localization-delocalization transition can emerge in a three-dimensional disordered system with an increase in the strength of correlations.
We show that the entanglement of an initially frequency-entangled photon pair propagating through a disordered scattering medium can be read off in transmission from the coincidence counting rate. The very same quantity also encodes the Thouless time of the medium.
We study the problem of disordered interacting bosons within grand-canonical thermodynamics and Bogoliubov theory. We compute the fractions of condensed and non-condensed particles and corrections to the compressibility and the speed of sound due to interaction and disorder. There are two small parameters, the disorder strength compared to the chemical potential and the dilute-gas parameter.
We study the spin-wave dispersion of localized spins in a disordered double-exchange model using the perturbation theory with respect to the strength of the disorder potential. We calculate the dispersion upto the next-leading order, and extensively examine the case of one-dimension. We show that in that case, disorder yields anomalous gapped-like behavior at the Fermi wavenumber of the conduction electrons.
We address the effect of disorder geometry on the critical force in disordered elastic systems. We focus on the model system of a long-range elastic line driven in a random landscape. In the collective pinning regime, we compute the critical force perturbatively. Not only our expression for the critical force confirms previous results on its scaling with respect to the microscopic disorder parameters, it also provides its precise dependence on the disorder geometry (represented by the disorder two-point correlation function). Our results are successfully compared to the results of numerical si…
The effect of strong disorder on the one-dimensional Kondo necklace model is studied using a perturbative real-space renormalization group approach which becomes asymptotically exact in the low energy limit. The phase diagram of the model presents a random quantum critical point separating two phases; the {\em random singlet phase} of a quantum disordered XY chain and the random Kondo phase. We also consider an anisotropic version of the model and show that it maps on the strongly disordered transverse Ising model. The present results provide a rigorous microscopic basis for non-Fermi liquid b…
In two dimensional disordered lattices, presence of interaction makes particles less localized than the non-interacting ones within the range of disorder strength $W \le 4$ and interaction strength $V \le 4$. If the interaction strength is higher, then particles localize more. Although, a localization- delocalization transition is not found, a transition with changes in the dominant correlations is observed. The nature of correlations between the particles as nearest neighbors become dominant beyond certain disorder strengths.
We show that Dirac fermion systems in two dimensions generally exhibit disorder-induced nodal arc replacing the nodal point and tilted Dirac cone, provided that the two components of the Dirac fermion correspond to two distinct orbitals unrelated by symmetry. This result is explicitly demonstrated using renormalization group analysis in a disordered Dirac model that we introduce, where the disorder potential acts differently on the two orbitals. As we show by numerical simulations and self-consistent Born approximation calculation, this drives the system into a new strongly disordered phase.
1. Introduction 2. Molecular dynamics simulation of amorphous carbon structures 3. Atomistic simulation of the bombardment process during the BEN phase of diamond CVD 4. Growth of amorphous silicon 5. One-dimensional hopping in disordered organic solids
We calculate the corrections to the conductivity and compressibility of a disordered metal when the mean free path is smaller than the screening length. Such a condition is shown to be realized for low densities and large disorder. Analysis of the stability of the metallic state reveals a transition to the insulating state in two-dimensions.
Two classes of models of driven disordered systems that exhibit history-dependent dynamics are discussed. The first class incorporates local inertia in the dynamics via nonmonotonic stress transfer between adjacent degrees of freedom. The second class allows for proliferation of topological defects due to the interplay of strong disorder and drive. In mean field theory both models exhibit a tricritical point as a function of disorder strength. At weak disorder depinning is continuous and the sliding state is unique. At strong disorder depinning is discontinuous and hysteretic.
We investigate the possibility of an Anderson transition below two dimensions in disordered systems of non-interacting electrons with symplectic symmetry. Numerical analysis of energy level statistics and conductance statistics on Sierpinski carpets with spin-orbit coupling indicates the occurrence of an Anderson transition below two dimensions.
Using the transfer matrix technique, we investigate the propagation of electron through a two dimensional disordered sample. We find that the spatial distribution of electrons is homogeneous only in the limit of weak disorder (diffusive transport regime). In the limit of very strong disorder, we identify a narrow channel through which the electron propagates from one side of the sample to the opposite side. Even in this limit, we prove the wave character of the electron propagation.
Energy spectra of disordered systems share a common feature: if the entropy of the quenched disorder is larger than the entropy of the dynamical variables, the spectrum is locally that of a random energy model and the correlation between energy and configuration is lost. We demonstrate this effect for the Edwards-Anderson model, but we also discuss its universality.
We find that the statistics of levels undergoing metal-insulator transition in systems with multi-parametric Gaussian disorders behaves in a way similar to that of the single parametric Brownian ensembles. The latter appear during aPoisson $\to$ Wigner-Dyson transition, driven by a random perturbation. The analogy provides the analytical evidence for the single parameter scaling behaviour in disordered systems as well as a tool to obtain the level-correlations at the critical point for a wide range of disorders.
We investigate the role of localization effects in the Kondo disorder mechanism for non-Fermi liquid behavior in disordered Kondo lattices. We find that the distribution of Kondo temperatures is strongly affected by fluctuations of the conduction electron density of states, a feature neglected in the previous treatment. For moderate disorder, the self-consistent distribution of Kondo temperatures flows to a universal log-normal form, irrespective of the form of the bare disorder distribution. For sufficient disorder, the system enters a Griffiths phase with diverging thermodynamic responses.
Due to the peculiar non-fermi liquid of one dimensional systems, disorder has particularly strong effects. We show that such systems belong to the more general class of disordered quantum solids. We discuss the physics of such disordered interacting systems and the methods that allows to treat them. In addition to, by now standard renormalization group methods, We explain how a simple variational approach allows to treat these problems even in case when the RG fails. We discuss various physical realizations of such disordered quantum solids both in one and higher dimensions (Wigner crystal, Bo…
Quantifying mechanical disorder in solids, either disordered crystals or glassy solids, and understanding its range of variability are of prime importance, e.g.~for discovering structure-properties relations. The bounds on the degree of mechanical fluctuations in disordered solids and how those depend on solids formation history remain unknown. Here, we study a broadly applicable quantifier of mesoscopic mechanical disorder $χ$, defined via the dimensionless fluctuations of the shear modulus, over a wide variety of disordered computer solids and upon varying different control parameters. $χ$ i…
The paper contains a rigorous proof of the absence of quasi-long-range order in the random-field O(N) model for strong disorder in the space of an arbitrary dimensionality. This result implies that quasi-long-range order inherent to the Bragg glass phase of the vortex system in disordered superconductors is absent as the disorder or external magnetic field is strong.
We study short-range quantum spin systems with Gaussian disorder. We obtain quantum mechanical extensions of the Ghirlanda-Guerra identities. We discuss properties of overlap spin operators with these identities.
We derive the mean-field theory of disordered block-copolymers composed of two monomeric species, combining Edwards' functional method with the replica technique of disordered systems. In the absence of disorder we recover the canonical self-consistent field theory of inhomogeneous polymers. In the presence of sequence disorder the theory can be regarded as a comprehensive, novel self-consistent treatment of copolymer melts, unifying the weak- and strong-inhomogeneous regimes. In particular, we study the stability of the microphase separation transition in a melt of diblock-copolymers, compose…
We present an asymptotically exact renormalization-group theory of the superfluid--insulator transition in one-dimensional disordered systems, with emphasis on an accurate description of the interplay between the Giamarchi--Schulz (instanton--anti-instanton) and weak-link (scratched-XY) criticalities. Combining the theory with extensive quantum Monte Carlo simulations allows us to shed new light on the ground-state phase diagram of the one-dimensional disordered Bose-Hubbard model at unit filling.
Disorder has been long considered as a formidable foe of theoretical physicists in their attempts to understand system's behavior. Here, we review recently accumulated data and propose that from the point of view of calculating thermodynamic properties, the problem of disorder may not be as severe as has been hitherto assumed. We particularly emphasize that contrary to the long-held view, collective excitations do not decay in disordered systems. We subsequently discuss recent experimental, theoretical and modelling results related to collective excitations in disordered media, and show how th…
