Anderson metal-insulator transitions with classical magnetic impurities

Abstract

We study the effects of classical magnetic impurities on the Anderson metal-insulator transition (AMIT) numerically. In particular we find that while a finite concentration of Ising impurities lowers the critical value of the site-diagonal disorder amplitude Wc, in the presence of Heisenberg impurities, Wc is first increased with increasing exchange coupling strength J due to time-reversal symmetry breaking. The resulting scaling with J is compared to analytical predictions by Wegner [1]. The results are obtained numerically, based on a finite-size scaling procedure for the typical density of states [2], which is the geometric average of the local density of states. The latter can efficiently be calculated using the kernel polynomial method [3]. Although still suffering from methodical shortcomings, our method proves to deliver results close to established results for the orthogonal symmetry class [4]. We extend previous approaches [5] by combining the KPM with a finite-size scaling analysis. We also discuss the relevance of our findings for systems like phosphor-doped silicon (Si:P), which are known to exhibit a quantum phase transition from metal to insulator driven by the interplay of both interaction and disorder, accompanied by the presence of a finite concentration of magnetic moments [6].