Ground-state phases of interacting Fermi gases in disordered one-dimensional lattices

Abstract

We numerically investigate a one-dimensional Anderson–Hubbard model under harmonic confinement. The effects of disorder on the ground-state properties are studied for Gaussian-correlated disorder and random impurities upon changing the amplitude of the disorder strength, the correlation length or the number of impurities. For a large disorder correlation length, both the band- and Mott-insulating phases re-enter naturally as a result of a smooth long-range correlated disorder. For the randomly distributed impurities in a system of composite Mott- and band-insulating phases, we find that the band-insulating region is rapidly destroyed while the Mott region is more robust against the increase of impurities. The fluid regions are less affected in this case.