We study the dimensional dependence of the interplay between correlation and disorder in two dimension at half filling using 2D $t-t'$ disordered Hubbard model with deterministic disorder both at zero and finite temperatures. Inclusion of $t'$ without disorder leads to a metallic phase at half filling below a certain critical value of $U$. Above this critical value $U_c$ correlation favours antiferromagnetic phase. Since disorder leads to double occupancy over the lower energy site, the competition between Hubbard $U$ and disorder leads to the emergence of a metallic phase, which can be quantified by the calculation of Kubo conductivity, gap at half-filling, density of states, spin order parameter, Inverse participation ratio (IPR) and bandwidth. We have studied the effect of disorder on the system in a very novel way through a deterministic disorder which follows a Fibonacci sequence. Behaviour of different parameters show interesting features on going from a two to quasi one dimensional system.
A brief review of metal-insulator transitions in three-dimensional doped semiconductors, with emphasis on the "critical exponent puzzle"; and new experimental findings that signal the possibility of an unexpected metal-insulator transition in dilute two-dimensional systems, such as silicon MOSFETs and GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructures.
We investigate the metal insulator transitions at finite temperature for the Hubbard model with diagonal alloy disorder. We solve the dynamical mean field theory equations with the non crossing approximation and we use the coherent potential approximation to handle disorder. The excitation spectrum is given for various correlation strength $U$ and disorder. Two successive metal insulator transitions are observed at integer filling values as $U$ is increased. An important selective transfer of spectral weight arises upon doping. The strong influence of the temperature on the low energy dynamics…
By using a combination of detailed experimental studies and simple theoretical arguments, we identify a novel mechanism characterizing the hopping transport in the Mott insulating phase of Ca$_{2-x}$Sr$_x$RuO$_4$ near the metal-insulator transition. The hopping exponent $α$ shows a systematic evolution from a value of $α=1/2$ deeper in the insulator to the conventional Mott value $α=1/3$ closer to the transition. This behavior, which we argue to be a universal feature of disordered Mott systems close to the metal-insulator transition, is shown to reflect the gradual emergence of disorder-induc…
We report on the temperature and field driven metal-insulator transition in disordered Ge:Mn magnetic semiconductors accompanied by magnetic ordering, magnetoresistance reaching thousands of percents and suppression of the extraordinary Hall effect by a magnetic field. Magnetoresistance isotherms are shown to obey a universal scaling law with a single scaling parameter depending on temperature and fabrication. We argue that the strong magnetic disorder leads to localization of charge carriers and is the origin of the unusual properties of Ge:Mn alloys.
Using the determinant quantum Monte Carlo method, we investigate the metal-insulator transition in the interacting disordered Hubbard model of a Lieb lattice, in which the system characterizes the flat band centered at the Fermi level. By choosing suitable electron densities, we ensure the weak interaction sign problem to improve the reliability of our results. It is found that disorder and on-site Coulomb repulsive interaction produce interesting effects that induce the metal-insulator transition which is impossible in the half-filled case. The density of states at the Fermi energy is still f…
The effect of binary alloy disorder on the ferromagnetic phases of f-electron materials is studied within the periodic Anderson model. We find that disorder in the conduction band can drastically enhance the Curie temperature due to an increase of the local f-moment. The effect may be explained qualitatively and even quantitatively by a simple theoretical ansatz. The emergence of an alloy Kondo insulator at non-integer filling is also pointed out.
We study the effect of disorder and doping on the metal-insulator transition in a repulsive Hubbard model on a square lattice using the determinant quantum Monte Carlo method. First, with the aim of making our results reliable, we compute the sign problem with various parameters such as temperature, disorder, on-site interactions, and lattice size. We show that in the presence of randomness in the hopping elements, the metal-insulator transition occurs and the critical disorder strength differs at different fillings. We also demonstrate that doping is a driving force behind the metal-insulator…
It is well established that for non-interacting electrons, increasing disorder drives a metal into a gapless localized Anderson insulator. While in three dimensions a threshold in disorder must be crossed for the transition, in two dimensions and lower, the smallest amount of disorder destabilizes the metal. The nature of the metal-insulator transition in an interacting system remains unresolved. Here we explore the effect of disorder on a strongly correlated Mott insulator without changing the carrier concentration. Angle resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) measurements on copper inte…
These introductory lecture notes describe recent results on novel Mott insulating phases which are "descendents" of superconductors - obtained by "quantum disordering". After a brief overview of quantum magnetism, attention is focussed on the spin-liquid phase of the two-leg Hubbard ladder and the "nodal liquid" - a descendent of the $d_{x^2-y^2}$ superconductor. These notes, which will appear in a future Les Houches publication, are self-contained and an effort has been made to keep them accessible.
We studied several aspects of the Mott metal-insulator transition in the disordered case. The model on which we based our analysis is the disordered Hubbard model, which is the simplest model capable of capturing the Mott metal-insulator transition. We investigated this model through the Statistical Dynamical Mean-Field Theory (statDMFT). This theory is a natural extension of the Dynamical Mean-Field Theory (DMFT), which has been used with relative success in the last several years with the purpose of describing the Mott transition in the clean case. As is the case for the latter theory, the s…
The experimentally observed metal-to-insulator transition in hydrogenated graphene is numerically confirmed for actual sized graphene samples and realistic impurity concentrations. The eigenstates of our tight-binding model with substitutional disorder corroborate the formation of electron-hole-puddles with characteristic length scales comparable to the ones found in experiments. The puddles cause charge inhomogeneities and tend to suppress Anderson localization. Even though, monitoring the charge carrier quantum dynamics and performing a finite-size scaling of the local density of states dist…
In this paper, we study the magnetic orders of two dimensional correlated topological insulators including the correlated Chern insulator and the correlated Z2 topological insulator at finite temperature. For the 2D correlated Chern insulator, we found that thermal-fluctuation-induced magnetic order appears in the intermediate interaction region of the correlated Chern insulator. On the contrary, for the correlated Z2 topological insulator there doesn't exist the thermal-fluctuation-induced magnetic order. In the end, we give an explanation on the difference.
A detailed study of the paramagnetic to ferromagnetic phase transition in the one-band Hubbard model in the presence of binary alloy disorder is presented. The influence of the disorder (with concentration $x$ and $1-x$ of the two alloy ions) on the Curie temperature $T_{c}$ is found to depend strongly on electron density $n$. While at high densities, $n>x$, the disorder always reduces $T_c$, at low densities, $n<x$, the disorder can even \emph{enhance} $T_c$ if the interaction is strong enough. At the particular density $n=x$ (i. e. not necessarily at half filling) the interplay between disor…
Recent experiments on the amorphous magnetic semiconductor Gd_x Si_{1-x}, Phys. Rev. Lett. 77, 4652 (1996), ibid 83, 2266 (1999), ibid 84, 5411 (2000), ibid 85, 848 (2000), have revealed an insulator-metal transition (i-m-t), as a function of doping and magnetic field, a spin glass state at low temperature, and colossal magnetoresistance close to the i-m-t. There are also signatures of strong electron-electron interaction close to the i-m-t. Motivated by these results we examine the role of doped magnetic moments in a strongly disordered electron system. In this paper we study a model of elect…
We study the Holstein-Double Exchange model in three dimensions in the presence of substitutional disorder. Using a new Monte Carlo technique we establish the phase diagram of the clean model and then focus on the effect of varying electron-phonon coupling and disorder at fixed electron density. We demonstrate how extrinsic disorder controls the interplay of lattice polaron effects and spin fluctuations and leads to widely varying regimes in transport. Our results on the disorder dependence of the ferromagnetic T_c and metal-insulator transitions bear direct comparison to data on the `optimall…
Stoichiometric Sr2IrO4 is a ferromagnetic Jeff = 1/2 Mott insulator driven by strong spin-orbit coupling. Introduction of very dilute oxygen vacancies into single-crystal Sr2IrO4-delta with delta < 0.04 leads to significant changes in lattice parameters and an insulator-to-metal transition at TMI = 105 K. The highly anisotropic electrical resistivity of the low-temperature metallic state for delta ~ 0.04 exhibits anomalous properties characterized by non-Ohmic behavior and an abrupt current-induced transition in the resistivity at T* = 52 K, which separates two regimes of resisitive switching …
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.
The extrapolation of small-cluster exact-diagonalization calculations is used to examine the influence of correlated hopping on valence and metal-insulator transitions in the one-dimensional Falicov-Kimball model. It is shown that the ground-state phase diagram as well as the picture of valence and metal-insulator transitions found for the conventional Falicov-Kimball model (without correlated hopping) are strongly changed when the correlated hopping term is added. The effect of correlated hopping is so strong that it can induce the insulator-metal transition, even in the half-filled band case…
The theory for disordered itinerant ferromagnets developed in a previous paper is used to construct a simple effective field theory that is capable of describing the quantum phase transition from a ferromagnetic metal to a ferromagnetic insulator. It is shown that this transition is in the same universality class as the one from a paramagnetic metal to a paramagnetic insulator in the presence of an external magnetic field, and that strong corrections to scaling exist in this universality class. The experimental consequences of these results are discussed.
Through a detailed study of scaling near the magnetic field-tuned superconductor-to-insulator transition in strongly disordered films, we find that results for a variety of materials can be collapsed onto a single phase diagram. The data display two clear branches, one with weak disorder and an intervening metallic phase, the other with strong disorder. Along the strongly disordered branch, the resistance at the critical point approaches $R_Q = h/4e^2$ and the scaling of the resistance is consistent with quantum percolation, and therefore with the predictions of the dirty boson model.
We investigate metal-insulator transitions on an interacting two-dimensional Dirac fermion system using the determinant quantum Monte Carlo method. The interplay between Coulomb repulsion, disorder and magnetic fields, drives the otherwise semi-metallic regime to insulating phases exhibiting different characters. In particular, with the focus on the transport mechanisms, we uncover that their combination exhibits dichotomic effects. On the one hand, the critical Zeeman field $B_c$, responsible for triggering the band-insulating phase due to spin-polarization on the carriers, is largely reduced…
We present a theory of the metal-insulator transition in a disordered two-dimensional electron gas. A quantum critical point, separating the metallic phase which is stabilized by electronic interactions, from the insulating phase where disorder prevails over the electronic interactions, has been identified. The existence of the quantum critical point leads to a divergence in the density of states of the underlying collective modes at the transition, causing the thermodynamic properties to behave critically as the transition is approached. We show that the interplay of electron-electron interac…
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.
We study the insulating phase of disordered indium oxide films that undergo a field-tuned superconductor-insulator transition. The transport measurements in a perpendicular magnetic field show distinct regimes of strongly fluctuating order-parameter amplitude and phase, and reveal a wide range of insulator strength in samples with differing disorder, despite the similarity in behavior near the SIT. We characterize the strength of the insulating phase and compare it to the superconducting strength. We find that the films do not return to the expected normal state even at high perpendicular magn…
The phase diagram of correlated, disordered electrons is calculated within dynamical mean--field theory using the geometrically averaged (''typical'') local density of states. Correlated metal, Mott insulator and Anderson insulator phases, as well as coexistence and crossover regimes are identified. The Mott and Anderson insulators are found to be continuously connected.
We study the low temperature transport characteristics of a disordered metal in the presence of electron-electron interactions. We compare Hartree-Fock and dynamical mean field theory (DMFT) calculations to investigate the scattering processes of quasiparticles off the screened disorder potential and show that both the local and non-local (coming from long-ranged Friedel oscillations) contributions to the renormalized disorder potential are suppressed in strongly renormalized Fermi liquids. Our results provide one more example of the power of DMFT to include higher order terms left out by weak…
We use the method of bulk-boundary correspondence of topological invariants to show that disordered topological insulators have at least one delocalized state at their boundary at zero energy. Those insulators which do not have chiral (sublattice) symmetry have in addition the whole band of delocalized states at their boundary, with the zero energy state lying in the middle of the band. This result was previously conjectured based on the anticipated properties of the supersymmetric (or replicated) sigma models with WZW-type terms, as well as verified in some cases using numerical simulations a…
We study one-dimensional disordered fermions that either undergo metal-insulator transitions or topological phase transitions to become trivial Anderson insulators. We focus on using entanglement to elucidate how the spatial, momentum, and internal degrees of freedom of fermions are affected by the presence of disorder in such cases. We develop entanglement tools that reveal the existence of metallic states in the presence of disorder and further show clear signatures of the corresponding localization transition even in the presence of interactions. In systems where the internal degrees of fre…
The disorder-driven metal-insulator transition in the quantum spin Hall systems is studied by scaling analysis of the Thouless conductance $g$. Below a critical disorder strength, the conductance is independent of the sample size $M$, an indication of critically delocalized electron states. The calculated beta function $β=d\ln g/d\ln M$ indicates that the metal-insulator transition is Kosterlitz-Thouless (KT) type, which is characterized by bounding and unbounding of vortex-antivortex pairs of the local currents. The KT like metal-insulator transition is a basic characteristic of the quantum s…
We use the dynamical mean-field approximation to study singularities in the self-energy and a two-particle irreducible vertex induced by the metal-insulator transition of the disordered Falicov-Kimball model. We set general conditions for the existence of a critical metal-insulator transition caused by a divergence of the imaginary part of the self-energy. We calculate explicitly the critical behavior of the self-energy for the symmetric and asymmetric disorder distributions. We demonstrate that the metal-insulator transition is preceded by a pole in a two-particle irreducible vertex. We show …
We elucidate the mechanism by which a Mott insulator transforms into a non-Fermi liquid metal upon increasing disorder at half filling. By correlating maps of the local density of states, the local magnetization and the local bond conductivity, we find a collapse of the Mott gap toward a V-shape pseudogapped density of states that occurs concomitantly with the decrease of magnetism around the highly disordered sites but an increase of bond conductivity. These metallic regions percolate to form an emergent non-Fermi liquid phase with a conductivity that increases with temperature. Bond conducti…
Calculation of topological invariants for crystalline systems is well understood in reciprocal space, allowing for the topological classification of a wide spectrum of materials. In this work, we present a new technique based on the entanglement spectrum, which can be used to identify the hidden topology of systems without translational invariance. By training a neural network to distinguish between trivial and topological phases using the entanglement spectrum obtained from crystalline or weakly disordered phases, we can predict the topological phase diagram for generic disordered systems. Th…
We analyse the topological transition and localization evolution of disordered two dimensional systems with non trivial topology based on bipartite lattices. Chern insulators with broken time reversal symmetry show non standard behavior for disorder realizations selectively distributed on only one of the sublattices. The Chern number survives to a much stronger disorder strength (one order of magnitude higher) than in the equally distributed disordered case and the final state in the strongly disordered case is metallic.
We calculate self-consistently the mutual dependence of electron correlations and electron-defect scattering for a two dimensional electron gas at finite temperature. We employ an STLS approach to calculate the electron correlations while the electron scattering rate off Coulombic impurities and surface roughness is calculated using self-consistent current-relaxation theory. The methods are combined and self-consistently solved. We discuss a metal-insulator transition for a range of disorder levels and electron densities. Our results are in good agreement with recent experimental observations.
Even though no local order parameter in the sense of the Landau theory exists for topological quantum phase transitions in Chern insulators, the highly non-local Berry curvature exhibits critical behavior near a quantum critical point. We investigate the critical properties of its real space analog, the local Chern marker, in weakly disordered Chern insulators. Due to disorder, inhomogeneities appear in the spatial distribution of the local Chern marker. Their size exhibits power-law scaling with the critical exponent matching the one extracted from the Berry curvature of a clean system. We dr…
With the aid of both a semi-analytical and a numerically exact method we investigate the charge dynamics in the vicinity of half-filling in the one- and two-dimensional $t$-$J$ model derived from a Fermi-Hubbard model in the limit of large interaction $U$ and hence small exchange coupling $J$. The spin degrees of freedom are taken to be disordered. So we consider the limit $0 < J \ll T \ll W$ where $W$ is the band width. We focus on evaluating the spectral density of a single hole excitation and the charge gap which separates the upper and the lower Hubbard band. One of the key findings is the…
We calculate the dynamic effective electron-electron interaction potential for a low density disordered two-dimensional electron gas. The disordered response function is used to calculate the effective potential where the scattering rate is taken from typical mobilities from recent experiments. We investigate the development of an effective attractive pair potential for both disordered and disorder free systems with correlations determined from existing numerical simulation data. The effect of disorder and correlations on the superconducting critical temperature Tc is discussed.
A two-band model of a disordered semiconductor is used to analyze dynamical interaction induced weakening of localization in a system that is accessible to experimental verification. The results show a dependence on the sign of the two-particle interaction and on the optical excitation energy of the Coulomb-correlated electron-hole pair.
We investigate the superfluid-insulator transition in the disordered two-dimensional Bose-Hubbard model through quantum Monte Carlo simulations. The Bose-Hubbard model is studied in the presence of site disorder and the quantum critical point between the Bose-glass and superfluid is determined in both the grand canonical ($μ/U=0.375$ close to $ρ=1$) and canonical ensemble ($ρ=1$ and 0.5). Particular attention is paid to disorder averaging and it is shown that an extremely large number of disorder realizations are needed in order to obtain reliable results. Typically we average over more than $…
We explore the role of phase fluctuations in a 3-dimensional s-wave superconductor, NbN, as we approach the critical disorder for the destruction of the superconducting state. Scanning tunneling spectroscopy measurements reveal that in the presence of strong disorder, a finite gap in the electronic spectrum continues to persist at temperatures above Tc. With increase in disorder, the superfluid density is strongly suppressed at low temperatures and evolves towards a linear-T variation at higher temperatures. These observations provide strong evidence that phase fluctuation leads to the formati…
We review recent progress in our theoretical understanding of strongly correlated fermion systems in the presence of disorder. Results were obtained by the application of a powerful nonperturbative approach, the Dynamical Mean-Field Theory (DMFT), to interacting disordered lattice fermions. In particular, we demonstrate that DMFT combined with geometric averaging over disorder can capture Anderson localization and Mott insulating phases on the level of one-particle correlation functions. Results are presented for the ground-state phase diagram of the Anderson-Hubbard model at half filling, bot…
Temperature dependent transport of disordered electronic systems is examined in the presence of strong correlations. In contrast to what is assumed in Fermi liquid approaches, finite temperature behavior in this regime proves largely dominated by inelastic electron-electron scattering. This conclusion is valid in the strong coupling limit, where the disorder, the correlations and the Fermi energy are all comparable, as in many materials near the metal-insulator transition.
It is now possible to study experimentally the combined effect of disorder and interactions in cold atom physics. Motivated by these developments we investigate the dynamics around the metal-insulator transition (MIT) in a one-dimensional (1D) Fermi gas with short-range interactions in a quasiperiodic potential by the time-dependent density-matrix renormalization group (tDMRG) technique. By tuning disorder and interactions we study the MIT from the weakly to the strongly interacting limit. The MIT is not universal as time evolution, well described by a process of anomalous diffusion, depends q…
We theoretically study the coupling of electric charge and spin polarization in an equilibrium and nonequilibrium electric transport across a two dimensional Josephson configuration comprised of disordered surface channels of a three dimensional topological insulator. In the equilibriun state of the system we predict the Edelstein effect, which is much more pronounced than its counterpart in conventional spin orbit coupled materials. Employing a quasiclassical Keldysh technique, we demonstrate that the ground state of system can be experimentally shifted into arbitrary macroscopic superconduct…
We point out the generic competition between the Hund's coupling and the spin-orbit coupling in correlated materials, and this competition leads to an electronic dilemma between the Hund's metal and the relativistic insulators. Hund's metals refer to the fate of the would-be insulators where the Hund's coupling suppresses the correlation and drives the systems into correlated metals. Relativistic Mott insulators refer to the fate of the would-be metals where the relativistic spin-orbit coupling enhances the correlation and drives the systems into Mott insulators. These contradictory trends are…
