Strong interplay between electron-phonon interaction and disorder in low doped systems

TL;DR

This paper investigates how electron-phonon interactions and disorder jointly influence the spectral properties of low-doped systems, revealing a strong interplay that affects metal-insulator transitions.

Contribution

It introduces a combined theoretical approach using CPA and PPNCA to analyze the interplay between disorder and electron-phonon coupling in low-doped materials.

Findings

Disorder and electron-phonon interactions strongly influence spectral features.

Phonon signatures persist despite strong disorder.

Electron-phonon coupling stabilizes the insulating phase.

Abstract

The effects of doping on the spectral properties of low doped systems are investigated by means of Coherent Potential Approximation to describe the distributed disorder induced by the impurities and Phonon-Phonon Non-Crossing Approximation to characterize a wide class of electron-phonon interactions which dominate the low-energy spectral features. When disorder and electron-phonon interaction work on comparable energy scales, a strong interplay between them arises, the effect of disorder can no more be described as a mere broadening of the spectral features and the phonon signatures are still visible despite the presence of strong disorder. As a consequence, the disorder-induced metal-insulator transition, is strongly affected by a weak or moderate electron-phonon coupling which is found to stabilize the insulating phase.