Decohering d-dimensional quantum resistance

The Landauer scattering approach to 4-probe resistance is revisited for the case of a d-dimensional disordered resistor in the presence of decoherence. Our treatment is based on an invariant-embedding equation for the evolution of the coherent reflection amplitude coefficient in the length of a 1-dimensional disordered conductor, where decoherence is introduced at par with the disorder through an outcoupling, or stochastic absorption, of the wave amplitude into side (transverse) channels, and its subsequent incoherent re-injection into the conductor. This is essentially in the spirit of B{\"u}ttiker's reservoir-induced decoherence. The resulting evolution equation for the probability density of the 4-probe resistance in the presence of decoherence is then generalised from the 1-dimensional to the d-dimensional case following an anisotropic Migdal-Kadanoff-type procedure and analysed. The anisotropy, namely that the disorder evolves in one arbitrarily chosen direction only, is the main approximation here that makes the analytical treatment possible. A qualitatively new result is that arbitrarily small decoherence reduces the localisation-delocalisation transition to a crossover making resistance moments of all orders finite.Comment: 14 pages, 1 figure, revised version, to appear in Phys. Rev.

Random-Matrix Theory of Electron Transport in Disordered Wires with Symplectic Symmetry

The conductance of disordered wires with symplectic symmetry is studied by a random-matrix approach. It has been believed that Anderson localization inevitably arises in ordinary disordered wires. A counterexample is recently found in the systems with symplectic symmetry, where one perfectly conducting channel is present even in the long-wire limit when the number of conducting channels is odd. This indicates that the odd-channel case is essentially different from the ordinary even-channel case. To study such differences, we derive the DMPK equation for transmission eigenvalues for both the even- and odd- channel cases. The behavior of dimensionless conductance is investigated on the basis of the resulting equation. In the short-wire regime, we find that the weak-antilocalization correction to the conductance in the odd-channel case is equivalent to that in the even-channel case. We also find that the variance does not depend on whether the number of channels is even or odd. In the long-wire regime, it is shown that the dimensionless conductance in the even-channel case decays exponentially as --> 0 with increasing system length, while --> 1 in the odd-channel case. We evaluate the decay length for the even- and odd-channel cases and find a clear even-odd difference. These results indicate that the perfectly conducting channel induces clear even-odd differences in the long-wire regime.Comment: 28pages, 5figures, Accepted for publication in J. Phys. Soc. Jp

Vacuum Polarization by a Magnetic Flux Tube at Finite Temperature in the Cosmic String Spacetime

In this paper we analyse the effect produced by the temperature in the vacuum polarization associated with charged massless scalar field in the presence of magnetic flux tube in the cosmic string spacetime. Three different configurations of magnetic fields are taken into account: $(i)$ a homogeneous field inside the tube, $(ii)$ a field proportional to $1/r$ and $(iii)$ a cylindrical shell with $\delta$-function. In these three cases, the axis of the infinitely long tube of radius $R$ coincides with the cosmic string. Because the complexity of this analysis in the region inside the tube, we consider the thermal effect in the region outside. In order to develop this analysis, we construct the thermal Green function associated with this system for the three above mentioned situations considering points in the region outside the tube. We explicitly calculate in the high-temperature limit, the thermal average of the field square and the energy-momentum tensor.Comment: 16 pages, 1 figur

Conductance Fluctuations in Disordered Wires with Perfectly Conducting Channels

We study conductance fluctuations in disordered quantum wires with unitary symmetry focusing on the case in which the number of conducting channels in one propagating direction is not equal to that in the opposite direction. We consider disordered wires with $N+m$ left-moving channels and $N$ right-moving channels. In this case, $m$ left-moving channels become perfectly conducting, and the dimensionless conductance $g$ for the left-moving channels behaves as $g \to m$ in the long-wire limit. We obtain the variance of $g$ in the diffusive regime by using the Dorokhov-Mello-Pereyra-Kumar equation for transmission eigenvalues. It is shown that the universality of conductance fluctuations breaks down for $m \neq 0$ unless $N$ is very large.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figure

Nonplanar integrability at two loops

In this article we compute the action of the two loop dilatation operator on restricted Schur polynomials that belong to the su(2) sector, in the displaced corners approximation. In this non-planar large N limit, operators that diagonalize the one loop dilatation operator are not corrected at two loops. The resulting spectrum of anomalous dimensions is related to a set of decoupled harmonic oscillators, indicating integrability in this sector of the theory at two loops. The anomalous dimensions are a non-trivial function of the 't Hooft coupling, with a spectrum that is continuous and starting at zero at large N, but discrete at finite N.Comment: version to appear in JHE

Scaling Theory of Conduction Through a Normal-Superconductor Microbridge

The length dependence is computed of the resistance of a disordered normal-metal wire attached to a superconductor. The scaling of the transmission eigenvalue distribution with length is obtained exactly in the metallic limit, by a transformation onto the isobaric flow of a two-dimensional ideal fluid. The resistance has a minimum for lengths near l/Gamma, with l the mean free path and Gamma the transmittance of the superconductor interface.Comment: 8 pages, REVTeX-3.0, 3 postscript figures appended as self-extracting archive, INLO-PUB-94031

Insensitivity to Time-Reversal Symmetry Breaking of Universal Conductance Fluctuations with Andreev Reflection

Numerical simulations of conduction through a disordered microbridge between a normal metal and a superconductor have revealed an anomalous insensitivity of the conductance fluctuations to a magnetic field. A theory for the anomaly is presented: Both an exact analytical calculation (using random-matrix theory) and a qualitative symmetry argument (involving the exchange of time-reversal for reflection symmetry).Comment: 8 pages, REVTeX-3.0, 2 figure

Statistics of transmission in one-dimensional disordered systems: universal characteristics of states in the fluctuation tails

We numerically study the distribution function of the conductance (transmission) in the one-dimensional tight-binding Anderson and periodic-on-average superlattice models in the region of fluctuation states where single parameter scaling is not valid. We show that the scaling properties of the distribution function depend upon the relation between the system's length $L$ and the length $l_s$ determined by the integral density of states. For long enough systems, $L \gg l_s$, the distribution can still be described within a new scaling approach based upon the ratio of the localization length $l_{loc}$ and $l_s$. In an intermediate interval of the system's length $L$, $l_{loc}\ll L\ll l_s$, the variance of the Lyapunov exponent does not follow the predictions of the central limit theorem and this scaling becomes invalid.Comment: 22 pages, 12 eps figure

Statistical Scattering of Waves in Disordered Waveguides: from Microscopic Potentials to Limiting Macroscopic Statistics

We study the statistical properties of wave scattering in a disordered waveguide. The statistical properties of a "building block" of length (delta)L are derived from a potential model and used to find the evolution with length of the expectation value of physical quantities. In the potential model the scattering units consist of thin potential slices, idealized as delta slices, perpendicular to the longitudinal direction of the waveguide; the variation of the potential in the transverse direction may be arbitrary. The sets of parameters defining a given slice are taken to be statistically independent from those of any other slice and identically distributed. In the dense-weak-scattering limit, in which the potential slices are very weak and their linear density is very large, so that the resulting mean free paths are fixed, the corresponding statistical properties of the full waveguide depend only on the mean free paths and on no other property of the slice distribution. The universality that arises demonstrates the existence of a generalized central-limit theorem. Our final result is a diffusion equation in the space of transfer matrices of our system, which describes the evolution with the length L of the disordered waveguide of the transport properties of interest. In contrast to earlier publications, in the present analysis the energy of the incident particle is fully taken into account.Comment: 75 pages, 10 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev