Scattering and transport statistics at the metal-insulator transition: A numerical study of the power-law banded random-matrix model

Abstract

We study numerically scattering and transport statistical properties of the one-dimensional Anderson model at the metal-insulator transition described by the Power-law Banded Random Matrix (PBRM) model at criticality. Within a scattering approach to electronic transport, we concentrate on the case of a small number of single-channel attached leads. We observe a smooth transition from localized to delocalized behavior in the average scattering matrix elements, the conductance probability distribution, the variance of the conductance, and the shot noise power by varying $b$ (the effective bandwidth of the PBRM model) from small ($b\ll 1$) to large ($b>1$) values. We contrast our results with analytic random matrix theory predictions which are expected to be recovered in the limit $b\to \infty$. We also compare our results for the PBRM model with those for the three-dimensional (3D) Anderson model at criticality, finding that the PBRM model with $b \in [0.2,0.4]$ reproduces well the scattering and transport properties of the 3D Anderson model.