It is well known that the metal-insulator transition in two dimensions for non-interacting fermions takes place at infinitesimal disorder. In contrast, the superconductor-to-insulator transition takes place at a finite critical disorder (on the order of Vc ~ 2t), where V is the typical width of the distribution of random site energies and t is the hopping scale. In this article we compare the localization/delocalization properties of one and two particles. Whereas the metal-insulator transition is a consequence of single-particle Anderson localization, the superconductor-insulator transition (SIT) is due to pair localization – or, alternatively, fluctuations of the phase conjugate to pair density. The central question we address is how superconductivity emerges from localized single-particle states. We address this question using inhomogeneous mean field theory and quantum Monte Carlo techniques and make several testable predictions for local spectroscopic probes across the SIT. We show that with increasing disorder, the system forms superconducting blobs on the scale of the coherence length embedded in an insulating matrix. In the superconducting state, the phases on the different blobs are coherent across the system whereas in the insulator long-range phase coherence is disrupted by quantum fluctuations. As a consequence of this emergent granularity, we show that the single-particle energy gap in the density of states survives across the transition, but coherence peaks exist only in the superconductor. A characteristic pseudogap persists above the critical disorder and critical temperature, in contrast to conventional theories. Surprisingly, the insulator has a two-particle gap scale that vanishes at the SIT despite a robust single-particle gap.
In two dimensions there is a direct superconductor-to-insulator quantum phase transition driven by increasing disorder. We elucidate, using a combination of inhomogeneous mean field theory and quantum Monte Carlo techniques, the nature of the phases and the mechanism of the transition. We make several testable predictions specifically for local spectroscopic probes. With increasing disorder, the system forms superconducting blobs on the scale of the coherence length embedded in an insulating matrix. In the superconducting state, the phases on the different blobs are coherent across the system whereas in the insulator long range phase coherence is disrupted by quantum fluctuations. As a consequence of this emergent granularity, we show that the single-particle energy gap in the density of states survives across the transition, but coherence peaks exist only in the superconductor. A characteristic pseudogap persists above the critical disorder and critical temperature, in contrast to conventional theories. Surprisingly, the insulator has a two-particle gap scale that vanishes at the SIT, despite a robust single-particle gap.
The superfluid to insulator quantum phase transition of a three-dimensional particle-hole symmetric system of disordered bosons is studied. To this end, a site-diluted quantum rotor Hamiltonian is mapped onto a classical (3+1)-dimensional
XY model with columnar disorder and analyzed by means of large-scale Monte Carlo simulations. The superfluid-Mott insulator transition of the clean, undiluted system is in the four-dimensional
XY universality class and shows mean-field critical behavior with logarithmic corrections. The clean correlation length exponent $\ensuremath{\nu}=1/2$ violates the Harris criterion, indicating that disorder must be a relevant perturbation. For nonzero dilutions below the lattice percolation threshold of
pc=0.688392, our simulations yield conventional power-law critical behavior with dilution-independent critical exponents
z=1.67(6), $\ensuremath{\nu}=0.90(5)$, $\ensuremath{\beta}/\ensuremath{\nu}=1.09(3)$, and $\ensuremath{\gamma}/\ensuremath{\nu}=2.50(3)$. The critical behavior of the transition across the lattice percolation threshold is controlled by the classical percolation exponents. Our results are discussed in the context of a classification of disordered quantum phase transitions, as well as experiments in superfluids, superconductors, and magnetic systems.