Condensed Matter Theory

Abstract:

We use a random walk in the ensemble of impurity configurations to generate a Brownian motion model for energy levels in disordered conductors. Treating arc-length along the random walk as fictitous time, the resulting Langevin equation relates spectral statistics to eigenfunction correlations. Solving this equation at energy scales large compared with the mean level spacing, we obtain the spectral form factor, and its parametric dependence.

Abstract:

We establish a new approach to calculating spectral statistics in disordered conductors, by considering how energy levels move in response to changes in the impurity potential. We use this fictitious dynamics to calculate the spectral form factor in two ways. First, describing the dynamics using a Fokker-Planck equation, we make a physically motivated decoupling, obtaining the spectral correlations in terms of the quantum return probability. Second, from an identity which we derive between two- and three-particle correlation functions, we make a mathematically controlled decoupling to obtain the same result. We also calculate weak localization corrections to this result, and show for two dimensional systems (which are of most interest) that corrections vanish to three-loop order.

Abstract:

We consider models for the plateau transition in the integer quantum Hall effect. Starting from the network model, we construct a mapping to the Dirac Hamiltonian in two dimensions. In the general case, the Dirac Hamiltonian has randomness in the mass, the scalar potential, and the vector potential. Separately, we show that the network model can also be associated with a nearest neighbour, tight-binding Hamiltonian.