2023/12/12 by L. F. C. Faria, Lucinda Faria, Victor L. Quito +8
Physics and Astronomy · #Disordered Systems and Neural Networks (cond-mat.dis-nn) #FOS: Physical sciences #Quantum and electron transport phenomena #Quantum many-body systems #Strongly Correlated Electrons (cond-mat.str-el) #Theoretical and Computational Physics #cond-mat.dis-nn #cond-mat.str-el
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2312.07474
published as Phys. Rev. B 114, 014206 (2026) · 22 pages including Appendices, 9 figures
openalex publication_date 2023/12/12 · openalex created_date 2023/12/14 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28 · arxiv created 2026/08/03 · arxiv updated 2026/08/04
We study the spin transport properties of some disordered spin chains with a special focus on the distribution of the frequency-dependent spin conductivity. In the cases of interest here, the systems are governed by an effectively infinite disorder at low energies. A hallmark of this behavior is the wide discrepancy between the average and the typical values of some physical quantities, which are described by extremely broad distributions. We show that such is also the case of the spin conductivity, whose average value is metallic but whose typical one, the physically relevant quantity, is insulating. This solves the apparent contradiction between the prediction of a spin metallic phase of the spin-1/2 disordered XX chain and its known localized behavior (after a mapping to free fermions). Our results are based on analytical and numerical implementations of a strong-disorder renormalization group as well as exact diagonalization studies. We present our analyses in very general terms, valid for systems of any spin S value, but the cases of S=1/2 and 1 are studied in greater detail.