Statistics of Hartree-Fock Levels in Small Disordered Systems

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the statistical properties of energy levels in small disordered quantum systems using Hartree-Fock approximation, revealing how interactions influence level distributions and their deviations from non-interacting predictions.

Contribution

It provides an analytical and numerical study of level statistics in interacting disordered systems, highlighting the evolution of inverse compressibility distribution and the breakdown of Koopmans' theorem under strong interactions.

Findings

Inverse compressibility distribution shifts from Wigner to Gaussian with interaction strength.

Level spacings follow Wigner-Dyson statistics regardless of interactions.

Enhanced fluctuations of inverse compressibility compared to Random Matrix Theory predictions.

Abstract

We study the statistics of quasiparticle and quasihole levels in small interacting disordered systems within the Hartree-Fock approximation. The distribution of the inverse compressibility, given according to Koopmans' theorem by the distance between the two levels across the Fermi energy, evolves from a Wigner distribution in the non-interacting limit to a shifted Gaussian for strong interactions. On the other hand the nature of the distribution of spacings between neighboring levels on the same side of the Fermi energy (corresponding to energy differences between excited states of the system with one missing or one extra electron) is not affected by the interaction and follows Wigner-Dyson statistics. These results are derived analytically by isolating and solving the appropriate Hartree-Fock equations for the two levels. They are substantiated by numerical simulations of the full set of Hartree-Fock equations for a disordered quantum dot with Coulomb interactions. We find enhanced fluctuations of the inverse compressibility compared to the prediction of Random Matrix Theory, possibly due to localization of the wavefunctions around the edge of the dot. The distribution of the inverse compressibility calculated from the discrete second derivative with respect to the number of particles of the Hartree-Fock ground state energy deviates from the distribution of the level spacing across the Fermi energy. The two distributions have similar shapes but are shifted with respect to each other. The deviation increases with the strength of the interaction thus indicating the breakdown of Koopmans' theorem in the strongly interacting limit.