The disordered Fermi-liquid fixed point and its instabilities

TL;DR

This paper introduces the disordered Fermi-liquid fixed point concept, explaining properties of disordered metals, and discusses various phase transitions and instabilities, including superconducting transitions and the ground state of 2D disordered systems.

Contribution

It presents a unifying framework for understanding disordered metals using the disordered Fermi-liquid fixed point and explores novel quantum phase transitions and instabilities.

Findings

Weak-localization effects near the fixed point

Two types of superconducting-to-normal-metal quantum phase transitions

Discussion on the ground state of two-dimensional disordered electron systems

Abstract

The concept of a disordered Fermi-liquid fixed point is introduced and used to understand various properties of disordered metals within a unifying framework. Corrections to scaling near this fixed point give what are commonly called weak-localization effects. Various instabilities of the disordered Fermi-liquid phase are discussed. These include two distinct types of superconducting-to-normal-metal quantum phase transitions. First, the quantum phase transition from a disordered metal to a conventional superconductor in bulk materials is considered. Second, a quantum phase transition in two dimensions from metallic-like behavior to a novel type of disorder induced, spin-triplet, even parity, superconductivity is treated. The paper is concluded with a discussion of the nature of the ground state of two-dimensional, disordered electron systems.