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arXiv:0805.4043 · Physical Review B

Boundary criticality at the Anderson transition between a metal and a quantum spin Hall insulator in two dimensions

Hideaki Obuse, Akira Furusaki, Shinsei Ryu, Christopher Mudry

Published Sep 2, 2008• 44 citations
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Abstract

Static disorder in a noninteracting gas of electrons confined to two dimensions can drive a continuous quantum (Anderson) transition between a metallic and an insulating state when time-reversal symmetry is preserved but spin-rotation symmetry is broken. The critical exponent $\ensuremath{\nu}$ that characterizes the diverging localization length and the bulk multifractal scaling exponents that characterize the amplitudes of the critical wave functions at the metal-insulator transition do not depend on the topological nature of the insulating state, i.e., whether it is topologically trivial (ordinary insulator) or nontrivial (a ${\mathbb{Z}}_{2}$ insulator supporting a quantum spin Hall effect). This is not true of the boundary multifractal scaling exponents, which we show (numerically) to depend on whether the insulating state is topologically trivial or not.

DOI
10.1103/physrevb.78.115301

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Static disorder in a noninteracting gas of electrons confined to two dimensions can drive a continuous quantum (Anderson) transition between a metallic and an insulating state when time-reversal symmetry is preserved but spin-rotation symmetry is broken. The critical exponent \ensuremathν\ensuremath{\nu}\ensuremathν that characterizes the diverging localization length and the bulk multifractal scaling exponents that characterize the amplitudes of the critical wave functions at the metal-insulator transition do not depend on the topological nature of the insulating state, i.e., whether it is topologically trivial (ordinary insulator) or nontrivial (a Z2{\mathbb{Z}}_{2}Z2​ insulator supporting a quantum spin Hall effect). This is not true of the boundary multifractal scaling exponents, which we show (numerically) to depend on whether the insulating state is topologically trivial or not.
We have estimated the critical exponent describing the divergence of the localization length at the metal-quantum spin Hall insulator transition. The critical exponent for the metal-ordinary insulator transition in quantum spin Hall systems is known to be consistent with that of topologically trivial symplectic systems. However, the precise estimation of the critical exponent for the metal-quantum spin Hall insulator transition proved to be problematic because of the existence, in this case, of edge states in the localized phase. We have overcome this difficulty by analyzing the second smallest positive Lyapunov exponent instead of the smallest positive Lyapunov exponent. We find a value for the critical exponent ν = 2.73 ± 0.02 that is consistent with that for topologically trivial symplectic systems.
The quantum phase transition between the three dimensional Dirac semimetal and the diffusive metal can be induced by increasing disorder. Taking the system of a disordered Z2 topological insulator as an important example, we compute the single particle density of states by the kernel polynomial method. We focus on three regions: the Dirac semimetal at the phase boundary between two topologically distinct phases, the tricritical point of the two topological insulator phases and the diffusive metal, and the diffusive metal lying at strong disorder. The density of states obeys a novel single parameter scaling, collapsing onto two branches of a universal scaling function, which correspond to the Dirac semimetal and the diffusive metal. The diverging length scale critical exponent ν and the dynamical critical exponent z are estimated, and found to differ significantly from those for the conventional Anderson transition. Critical behavior of experimentally observable quantities near and at the tricritical point is also discussed.
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We study the critical properties of the topological Anderson phase transition in a strongly disordered Chern insulator, separating the topological phase from a trivial Anderson insulator. We show that the transition is characterized by a non-zero electrical conductance and by the emergence of a critical length scale in the real-space profile of the local Chern marker. From this, we extract the correlation-length and the dynamical critical exponents, which are consistent with those of non-interacting models of the integer quantum Hall effect. We then ramp the disorder strength across the transition and study the ensuing dynamics. In contrast to clean topological systems, we find that the excitation density does not follow the Kibble-Zurek scaling. The non-equilibrium length scale associated with the local Chern marker is decoupled from the generation of excitations. For studied system sizes, we find it to be close to the Kibble-Zurek prediction for the topological-to-trivial quench, while it deviates from it for the reverse direction.