Effects of Scale-Free Disorder on the Anderson Metal-Insulator Transition

Abstract

We investigate the three-dimensional Anderson model of localization via a modified transfer-matrix method in the presence of scale-free diagonal disorder characterized by a disorder correlation function $g(r)$ decaying asymptotically as $r^{-α}$. We study the dependence of the localization-length exponent $ν$ on the correlation-strength exponent $α$. % For fixed disorder $W$, there is a critical $α_{\rm c}$, such that for $α< α_{\rm c}$, $ν=2/α$ and for $α> α_{\rm c}$, $ν$ remains that of the uncorrelated system in accordance with the extended Harris criterion. At the band center, $ν$ is independent of $α$ but equal to that of the uncorrelated system. The physical mechanisms leading to this different behavior are discussed.