Conductance and localization in disordered wires: role of evanescent states

TL;DR

This paper analyzes how evanescent states influence conductance and localization in disordered coupled wire systems, revealing that these states can significantly increase localization lengths and are affected by quantum interference effects.

Contribution

It extends an analytical scattering matrix approach to include evanescent states in coupled disordered wires, showing their impact on conductance and localization.

Findings

Evanescent states can increase localization lengths.

Quantum interference suppresses disorder-mediated coupling.

Evanescent modes are ineffective for transmission and reflection.

Abstract

This paper extends an earlier analytical scattering matrix treatment of conductance and localization in coupled two- and three Anderson chain systems for weak disorder when evanescent states are present at the Fermi level. Such states exist typically when the interchain coupling exceeds the width of propagating energy bands associated with the various transverse eigenvalues of the coupled tight-binding systems. We calculate reflection- and transmission coefficients in cases where, besides propagating states, one or two evanescent states are available at the Fermi level for elastic scattering of electrons by the disordered systems. We observe important qualitative changes in these coefficients and in the related localization lengths due to ineffectiveness of the evanescent modes for transmission and reflection in the various scattering channels. In particular, the localization lengths are generally significantly larger than the values obtained when evanescent modes are absent. Effects associated with disorder mediated coupling between propagating and evanescent modes are shown to be suppressed by quantum interference effects, in lowest order for weak disorder.