Anderson Localization of Matter Waves in 3D Anisotropic Disordered Potentials

TL;DR

This paper investigates how Anderson localization affects matter wave transport in 3D anisotropic disordered potentials, revealing that coherent and incoherent diffusion anisotropies differ significantly, especially at the localization transition.

Contribution

It introduces a cutoff-free coherent transport theory showing the dominant role of disorder-averaged scattering in localization anisotropy, contrasting with previous assumptions.

Findings

Coherent transport anisotropy is mainly determined by the disorder-averaged medium.

Incoherent and coherent diffusion anisotropies differ significantly at criticality.

Interference effects strongly influence localization in anisotropic potentials.

Abstract

Using a cutoff-free formulation of the coherent transport theory, we show that the interference terms at the origin of localization strongly affect the transport anisotropy. In contrast to the common hypothesis, we then find that the anisotropies of incoherent and coherent diffusion are significantly different, in particular at criticality. There, we show that the coherent transport anisotropy is mainly determined by the properties of the disorder-averaged effective scattering medium while the incoherent transport contributions become irrelevant.