Weak Random Potential Research Articles

Emergent space-time supersymmetry at disordered quantum critical points

We study the effect of disorder on the space-time supersymmetry that is proposed to emerge at the quantum critical point of pair density wave transition in $(2+1)$-dimensional (D) Dirac semimetals and $(3+1)$D Weyl semimetals. In the $(2+1)$D Dirac semimetal, we consider three types of disorder, including random scalar potential, random vector potential and random mass potential, whereas the random mass disorder is absent in the $(3+1)$D Weyl semimetal. Via a systematic renormalization-group analysis, we find that any type of weak random disorder is irrelevant due to the couplings between the disorder potential and the Yukawa vertex. The emergent supersymmetry is, thus, stable against weak random potentials. Our paper will pave the way for exploration supersymmetry in realistic condensed-matter systems.

Moving binary Bose-Einstein condensates in a weak random potential

We study the behavior of moving Bose-Bose mixtures in a weak disordered potential in the realm of the Bogoliubov-Huang-Meng theory. Corrections due to the quantum fluctuations, disorder effects and the relative motion of two fluids to the glassy fraction, the condensed depletion, the anomalous density, and the equation of state of each species are obtained analytically for small velocity. We show that the intriguing interplay of the relative motion and the disorder potential could not only change the stability condition, but destroy also the localization process in the two condensates preventing the formation of a Bose glass state. Unexpectedly, we find that the quantum fluctuations reduce with the velocity of the two fluids. The obtained theoretical predictions are checked by our numerical results.

Proposal for Anderson localization in transverse spatial degrees of freedom of photons

We propose an experimental setup for studying the Anderson localization of light in the continuous transverse spatial degrees of freedom of the photons. This physical phenomenon can be observed in the transverse profile of a paraxial and quasi-monochromatic beam of light using a spatial light modulator. The light modulator acts in the laser beam as a weak random potential. Here, differently from the standard models studied in the literature, our setup splits the dispersion and potential terms along the beam evolution. By numerical simulations we confirm the feasibility of our experimental proposal.

Effective temperature of a superfluid flowing in a random potential

The spatial fluctuations of a superfluid flowing in a weak random potential are investigated. We employ classical field theory to demonstrate that the disorder-averaged nonequilibrium second-order correlation of the order parameter at zero temperature is identical to the thermally averaged equilibrium counterpart of a uniform superfluid at an effective temperature. The physics behind this equivalence is that scattering of a moving condensate by disorder has the same effect on the correlation function as equilibrium thermal excitations. The correlation function exhibits an exponential decay in one dimension and a power-law decay in two dimensions. We show that the effective temperature can be measured in an interference experiment of ultracold atomic gases.

Effect of weak disorder in multi-Weyl semimetals**Project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 11874337).

We study the behaviors of three-dimensional double and triple Weyl fermions in the presence of weak random potential. By performing the Wilsonian renormalization group (RG) analysis, we reveal that the quasiparticle experiences strong renormalization which leads to the modification of the density of states and quasiparticle residue. We further utilize the RG analysis to calculate the classical conductivity and show that the diffusive transport is substantially corrected due to the novel behavior of the quasiparticle and can be directly measured by experiments.

Quantum critical phenomena of the excitonic insulating transition in two dimensions

We study the quantum criticality of the phase transition between the Dirac semimetal and the excitonic insulator in two dimensions. Even though the system has a semimetallic ground state, there are observable effects of excitonic pairing at finite temperatures and/or finite energies, provided that the system is in proximity to the excitonic insulating transition. To determine the quantum critical behavior, we consider three potentially important interactions, including the Yukawa coupling between Dirac fermions and the excitonic order parameter fluctuation, the long-range Coulomb interaction, and the disorder scattering. We employ the renormalization group technique to study how these interactions affect quantum criticality and also how they influence each other. We first investigate the Yukawa coupling in the clean limit, and show that it gives rise to typical non-Fermi liquid behavior. Adding random scalar potential to the system always turns such a non-Fermi liquid into a compressible diffusive metal. In comparison, the non-Fermi liquid behavior is further enhanced by random vector potential, but is nearly unaffected by random mass. Incorporating the Coulomb interaction may change the results qualitatively. In particular, the non-Fermi liquid state is protected by the Coulomb interaction for weak random scalar potential, and it becomes a diffusive metal only when random scalar potential becomes sufficiently strong. When random vector potential or random mass coexists with Yukawa coupling and Coulomb interaction, the system is a stable non-Fermi liquid state, with fermion velocities flowing to constants in the former case and being singularly renormalized in the latter case. These quantum critical phenomena can be probed by measuring observable quantities.

Weyl Semimetal to Metal Phase Transitions Driven by Quasiperiodic Potentials.

We explore the stability of three-dimensional Weyl and Dirac semimetals subject to quasiperiodic potentials. We present numerical evidence that the semimetal is stable for weak quasiperiodic potentials, despite being unstable for weak random potentials. As the quasiperiodic potential strength increases, the semimetal transitions to a metal, then to an "inverted" semimetal, and then finally to a metal again. The semimetal and metal are distinguished by the density of states at the Weyl point, as well as by level statistics, transport, and the momentum-space structure of eigenstates near the Weyl point. The critical properties of the transitions in quasiperiodic systems differ from those in random systems: we do not find a clear critical scaling regime in energy; instead, at the quasiperiodic transitions, the density of states appears to jump abruptly (and discontinuously to within our resolution).

Landau instability and mobility edges of the interacting one-dimensional Bose gas in weak random potentials

We study the frictional force exerted on the trapped, interacting 1D Bose gas under the influence of a moving random potential. Specifically we consider weak potentials generated by optical speckle patterns with finite correlation length. We show that repulsive interactions between bosons lead to a superfluid response and suppression of frictional force, which can inhibit the onset of Anderson localisation. We perform a quantitative analysis of the Landau instability based on the dynamic structure factor of the integrable Lieb–Liniger model and demonstrate the existence of effective mobility edges.

Quantum phase transition and unusual critical behavior in multi-Weyl semimetals

The low-energy behaviors of gapless double- and triple-Weyl fermions caused by the interplay of long-range Coulomb interaction and quenched disorder are studied by performing a renormalization group analysis. It is found that an arbitrarily weak disorder drives the double-Weyl semimetal to undergo a quantum phase transition into a compressible diffusive metal, independent of the disorder type and the Coulomb interaction strength. In contrast, the nature of the ground state of triple-Weyl fermion system relies sensitively on the specific disorder type in the noninteracting limit: The system is turned into a compressible diffusive metal state by an arbitrarily weak random scalar potential or $z$ component of random vector potential but exhibits stable critical behavior when there is only $x$ or $y$ component of random vector potential. In case the triple-Weyl fermions couple to random scalar potential, the system becomes a diffusive metal in the weak interaction regime but remains a semimetal if Coulomb interaction is sufficiently strong. Interplay of Coulomb interaction and $x$, or $y$, component of random vector potential leads to a stable infrared fixed point that is likely to be characterized by critical behavior. When Coulomb interaction coexists with the $z$ component of random vector potential, the system flows to the interaction-dominated strong coupling regime, which might drive a Mott insulating transition. It is thus clear that double- and triple-Weyl fermions exhibit distinct low-energy behavior in response to interaction and disorder. The physical explanation of such distinction is discussed in detail. The role played by long-range Coulomb impurity in triple-Weyl semimetal is also considered.

Wegner estimate for Landau-breather Hamiltonians

We consider Landau Hamiltonians with a weak coupling random electric potential of breather type. Under appropriate assumptions we prove a Wegner estimate. It implies the Hölder continuity of the integrated density of states. The main challenge is the problem how to deal with non-linear dependence on the random parameters.

Marginal and irrelevant disorder in Einstein-Maxwell backgrounds

We study analytically the effect of a weak random chemical potential of zero average in an Einstein-Maxwell background. For uncorrelated disorder this perturbation is relevant however we show that it can become marginal or even irrelevant by tuning disorder correlations. At zero temperature we find that, to leading order in the disorder strength, the correction to the conductivity for irrelevant perturbations vanishes. In the marginal case, in order to renormalize a logarithmic divergence, we carry out a resummation of the perturbative expansion of the metric that leads to a Lifshitz-like geometry in the infrared. Disorder in this case also induces a positive correction to the conductivity. At finite temperature the black hole acquires an effective charge and the thermal conductivity has the expected Drude peak that signals the breaking of translational invariance. However the electric conductivity is not affected by the random chemical potential to leading order in the disorder strength.

The Density of Surface States as the Total Time Delay

For a scattering problem of tight-binding Bloch electrons by a weak random surface potential, a generalized Levinson theorem is put forward showing the equality of the total density of surface states and the density of the total time delay. The proof uses explicit formulas for the wave operators in the new rescaled energy and interaction (REI) representation, as well as an index theorem for adequate associated operator algebras.

Two-dimensional dipolar bosons with weak disorder

We consider two-dimensional dipolar bosonic gas with dipoles oriented perpendicularly to the plane in a weak random potential. We investigate analytically and numerically the condensate depletion, the one-body density-matrix, the ground state energy, the sound velocity and the superfluid fraction. Concentrating on the regime where a roton-like excitation spectrum forms, our results show that the superfluidity disappears below a critical value of disorder strength yielding the transition to a non-trivial quantum regime.

Two-loop disorder effects on the nematic quantum criticality in d-wave superconductors

The gapless nodal fermions exhibit non-Fermi liquid behaviors at the nematic quantum critical point that is supposed to exist in some d-wave cuprate superconductors. This non-Fermi liquid state may be turned into a disorder-dominated diffusive metal if the fermions also couple to a disordered potential that generates a relevant perturbation in the sense of renormalization group theory. It is therefore necessary to examine whether a specific disorder is relevant or not. We study the interplay between critical nematic fluctuation and random chemical potential by performing renormalization group analysis. The parameter that characterizes the strength of random chemical potential is marginal at the one-loop level, but becomes marginally relevant after including the two-loop corrections. Thus even weak random chemical potential leads to diffusive motion of nodal fermions and the significantly critical behaviors of physical implications, since the strength flows eventually to large values at low energies.

Bogoliubov theory of dipolar Bose gas in a weak random potential

We consider a dilute homogeneous Bose gas with both an isotropic short-range contact interaction and an anisotropic long-range dipole-dipole interaction in a weak random potential at low temperature in three dimensions. Within the realm of Bogoliubov theory we analyze how both condensate and superfluid depletion are depleted due to quantum and thermal fluctuations as well as disorder fluctuations.

Microscopic scattering theory for interacting bosons in weak random potentials

We develop a diagrammatic scattering theory for interacting bosons in a three-dimensional, weakly disordered potential. Based on a microscopic N-body scattering theory, we identify the relevant diagrams including elastic and inelastic collision processes that are sufficient to describe diffusive quantum transport. By taking advantage of the statistical properties of the weak disorder potential, we demonstrate how the N-body dynamics can be reduced to a nonlinear integral equation of Boltzmann type for the single-particle diffusive flux. Our theory reduces to the Gross–Pitaevskii mean field description in the limit where only elastic collisions are taken into account. However, even at weak interaction strength, inelastic collisions lead to energy redistribution between the bosons—initially prepared all at the same single-particle energy—and thereby induce thermalization of the single-particle current. In addition, we include also weak localization effects and determine the coherent corrections to the incoherent transport in terms of the coherent backscattering signal. We find that inelastic collisions lead to an enhancement of the backscattered cone in a narrow spectral window for increasing interaction strength.

Interplay of localization lengths in two-component mixtures of one-dimensional cold atoms

The interplay between disorder and interactions in quantum systems is a long-standing topic of condensed matter physics. We study the fate of a two-component one-dimensional mixture of cold atoms in the presence of a weak random potential. We show how disorder-induced localization of one species can influence the localization of the other species through interactions and identity three distinct phases: a delocalized phase described by a two-component Luttinger liquid, a hybrid phase where only one species is localized and a fully localized phase where both components of the mixture are localized. The latter phase is characterized by two nested localization length scales. We present the possible signatures of these phases in various observables such as the structure factors (related to Bragg scattering experiments) and the momentum distributions observed in time-of-flight experiments.

Inelastic Multiple Scattering of Interacting Bosons in Weak Random Potentials

We develop a diagrammatic scattering theory for interacting bosons in a three-dimensional, weakly disordered potential. We show how collisional energy transfer between the bosons induces the thermalization of the inelastic single-particle current which, after only a few collision events, dominates over the elastic contribution described by the Gross-Pitaevskii ansatz.

Boltzmann Limit for a Homogeneous Fermi Gas with Dynamical Hartree-Fock Interactions in a Random Medium

We study the dynamics of the thermal momentum distribution function for an interacting, homogeneous Fermi gas on ℤ3 in the presence of an external weak static random potential, where the pair interactions between the fermions are modeled in dynamical Hartree-Fock theory. We determine the Boltzmann limits associated to different scaling regimes defined by the size of the random potential, and the strength of the fermion interactions.

Asymptotics of the Solutions of the Random Schrödinger Equation

We consider solutions of the Schrodinger equation with a weak time-dependent random potential. It is shown that when the two-point correlation function of the potential is rapidly decaying, then the Fourier transform \({\hat\zeta_\epsilon(t,\xi)}\) of the appropriately scaled solution converges point-wise in ξ to a stochastic complex Gaussian limit. On the other hand, when the two-point correlation function decays slowly, we show that the limit of \({\hat\zeta_\epsilon(t,\xi)}\) has the form \({\hat\zeta_0(\xi){\rm exp}(iB_\kappa(t,\xi))}\) where Bκ(t, ξ) is a fractional Brownian motion.